“Mate, I’d like to say you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Geoff said, shaking his head, “but, frankly, I was hoping you were a whole lot farther away from this sorry-assed place than here.” He wrapped his greasy, oil-stained arms around my back.
Champ was a Kiwi, who’d been on the world minicycle racing tour for several years. Once, he even held the tour speed record. After a bout or two with Jack—Daniel’s—and a sticky divorce, he ended up performing motorcycle stunts in cycle shows, like jumping over cars and through hoops of fire. I’d met him working the bar at Bradley’s. You put anything crazy enough in front of him and chased it with a beer, Champ was in!
He went over to a minifridge and opened a Pete’s for me. Then he sat on the fridge. “I figure you’re not here for the brew, now, are you, mate?”
I shook my head. “I’m in deep shit, Geoff.”
He snorted. “You think just ’cause my brain’s half fried and I’m drunk the other half of the time, I can’t read the papers, Ned? Well, that might be true—but I can turn on the TV.”
“You know I didn’t do any of that stuff, Champ.” I looked him in the eye.
“You’re preaching to the choir, mate. You think anyone who actually knows you believes you’re going around the country, killing every bloke you meet? It’s the rest of the world I’d be worried about. I was sorry about those friends of yours, Ned, and your brother. Just what kind of mess are you in?”
“The kind that needs help, Geoff. Lots of it.”
He shrugged. “You can’t be aiming very high if you’re coming to me.”
“I guess I’m coming”—I swallowed—“to the only place I can.”
Geoff winked, and tipped his beer toward me. “Been there,” he said, nodding. “It’s a long straight shot down from number one, ’specially when you can’t see straight in the morning, not to mention trying to drive it, taking spoon curves at one hundred eighty miles an hour. I don’t have much cash, mate, sorry. But I know how to get you out of here, if that’s what you need. Know these boats that sneak in past the Coast Guard down the coast a bit, whatever the hell they’re carrying. Guess they go back out as well. I bet Costa Rica sounds good about now, right?”
I shook my head. “I’m not trying to leave, Geoff. I want to prove I didn’t do these things. I want to find out who did.”
“I see. . . . You and which army, mate?”
“I figure it’s that, or kill myself,” I said.
“Been there, too.” Geoff rubbed an oily hand over his orange hair. “Shit, seems I’m perfectly qualified to lend a hand after all. That, and I’m a sucker for a lost cause. But you know that, don’t you, Neddie-boy? That’s why you’re here.”
“That,” I said, “and no other place to go.”
“Flattered.” Champ took another swig of beer. “You know, of course, I get caught just in the general zip code with you, I could risk everything here. My business, the comeback.”
He got up and limped over to a sink, looking as if he had crawled out of a scrum after two hours of rugby. He washed the grease off his hands and face. “Oh, screw the comeback, mate. . . . But we oughta get one thing straight before I commit.”
“I won’t put your ass in any danger, Champ, if that’s what you mean.”
“Danger?” He looked at me as if I were crazy. “You must be joking, mate. I fly through gasoline fires for three hundred bucks a shot. I was only thinking . . . You are fucking innocent, aren’t you, Ned?”
“Of course I’m innocent, Geoff.”
He chewed on the beer bottle for a few seconds. “Okay, that makes things easier. . . . Anyone ever tell you, you’re a hard fucking bargainer, Ned?” Champ’s eyes crinkled into a smile.
I went over and extended a hand, then pulled him toward me. “I didn’t have anyone else to turn to, Geoff.”
“Don’t get all maudlin on me, Neddie. Whatever you got in store is a whole lot safer than the usual line of work. But before we crack a beer on it, you must have some kind of plan. Who else do we have in the pit?”
“Some girl,” I said. “I hope.”
“Some girl?” Geoff squinted.
“Good news is, I think she believes me, too.”
“Good to know, mate. We’ll overwhelm ’em with numbers. So what’s the bad news, then?”
I frowned. “Bad news is, she’s with the FBI.”
Chapter 50
“LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT.” Special Agent in Charge Moretti stood up at his desk, staring at Ellie. His jaw had dropped in something between shock and disbelief. “You want me to bring in Dennis Stratton for questioning for murder?”
“Look,” Ellie said, taking out the evidence bag containing the black golf tee from Tess McAuliffe’s room. “You see this, George? When I questioned Stratton at his home, he took the same black golf tee out of his pocket. They’re from the Trump International Golf Club. Stratton’s a member there. It ties him to the scene.”
“It ties in a couple of hundred other people,” Moretti said, blinking. “I hear Rudy Giuliani’s a member. You want to bring him in too?”
Ellie nodded. “If he was having a relationship with Tess McAuliffe, George, yes.”
Ellie opened her file, placing Dennis Stratton’s photo on his desk. “I went back to the Brazilian Court and showed this around. He knew her, George. He more than knew her. They were having an affair.”
Moretti stared right through her. “You went around to a crime scene that’s not even our jurisdiction with a picture of one of the most prominent men in Palm Beach? I thought we had an understanding, Ellie. You don’t get to look into the dead people. You get to trace the art.”
“They’re tied together, George. The art, Stratton, Tess McAuliffe too. A waiter recognized him. They were having an affair.”
“And what would you like me to charge him with, Special Agent? Cheating on his wife?”
Moretti came around the desk and shut his door. Then he leaned on the edge of his desk, towering over her, like a reproving school principal.
“Dennis Stratton isn’t some punk you slap up against the wall without real evidence, Ellie. You went back to the Brazilian Court, overriding my orders, on a case that’s not even ours? You’ve been baiting this guy from the beginning. Now you want to bring him in. For murder?”
“He had a relationship with the victim. How do we not look into it?”
“I don’t quite get you, Ellie. We’ve got a suspect who put a goddamn gun to your head in Boston, whose prints are all over two murder scenes. Whose brother turns up dead and who turns out to have been with this McAuliffe gal the day she was killed. And it’s Dennis Stratton you want me to bring in?”
“Why would Kelly kill the girl? He was falling for her, George. Stratton’s lying, George. He didn’t come clean about knowing the victim. He didn’t mention it when the Palm Beach police were there.”
“How do you know he didn’t mention it to the Palm Beach PD?” Moretti asked. “Have you checked their depositions on the case?” Moretti blew out a frustrated breath. “I’ll run it by the PBPD. I give you my word. How’s that, okay? You’re just going to have to learn to trust that the agencies assigned to see these cases through are doing their job. Just like you have to do, right? Your job.”
“Yeah.” Ellie nodded. She had taken it as far as she could.
“Just one more thing . . . ,” Moretti added, putting his arm around Ellie’s shoulder as he ushered her to the office door. “You ever go around me again on something like this, your next job’ll be investigating ‘going out of business’ sales for fraud in the stores down on Collins Avenue.
“Now that sure would be a waste of that fancy degree of yours, wouldn’t it, Special Agent Shurtleff?”
Ellie tucked the evidence folder under her arm. “Yes, sir,” she said, nodding, “it would be a waste.”
Chapter 51
ELLIE ROLLED HER KAYAK through a cresting wave, righting the craft as the next wave started to swell.
It was a beau
ty, and she held the kayak in a tight draw, climbing, anticipating the moment, as the wave peaked.
Then she hit the sucker hard. For a second Ellie hung there in stationary bliss, then released into the curl as though she were shot out of a rocket, cold spray slapping her face.
She was inside it, almost as if there were a tube. This is a ten. In the stillness, waiting for the wave to crash, she felt a hundred percent alive.
Finally the wave collapsed over her. She shot up, the kayak bucking in the air. She rode it for a few strokes, gliding in toward shore. Another wave bumped her from behind. Then Ellie slid up onto the beach. She shook the salt spray off her face.
A ten!
She thought about one more ride, then dragged the fiberglass craft out of the surf. She tucked it under her arm and headed back to the pink two-bedroom bungalow in Delray she rented, a block away.
These late-afternoon rides, after work, when the tide was high, were the only time Ellie could feel alone and free enough from the rest of the world to think. Really think. It was a bonus to moving down there: her own little world when something was troubling her. And it seemed as if everything were troubling her right now.
She knew Moretti wasn’t going to do crap about Stratton’s connection to Tess. They already had Ned wrapped up with a yellow ribbon. Fingerprints, a connection to the victims, kidnapping a federal officer.
Be a good little agent, Ellie said to herself. As Moretti said, this Tess McAuliffe thing, it wasn’t even their case.
Something drifted into her mind, something her grandfather used to say. He was one of those self-made men who had battled mobsters in the thirties. He called the bad guys “crumb-bums.” And he had built a small blouse factory into a large sportswear firm.
When life boxes you in a corner, he would always say, box back!
Ellie was sure that bastard Stratton was involved somehow. In the theft of his own art, maybe in Tess’s murder. The way he laughed at her, it was almost as if he were egging her on. Find something on me. I dare you.
So find something, Ellie. She dragged the fiberglass kayak up to her porch.
Box back!
Like that’s so easy, right? Still in her tight-fitting neoprene suit, Ellie rinsed the salt off the craft’s hull.
She was in the FBI, not the blouse business. There was a chain of command. She had this well-defined job. Someone she reported to. This wasn’t just some hunch she was following up on. This was going over people’s heads.
It was her career.
Ellie leaned the kayak against the wall and peeled off her rubber river shoes, shaking the spray out of her hair. That sure would be a waste of that fancy degree of yours, wouldn’t it? Moretti had sniffed. She was losing ground with him every day. And Ned? Why was she doing this?
“What’re you trying to do,” she muttered, shaking her head, exasperated, “let this guy destroy your career?”
She heard a voice from behind, scaring the wits out of her. Ellie spun around.
“Be careful what you wish for, Ellie. . . . You never know what the tide will roll in.”
Chapter 52
“JESUS, NED!” Ellie’s eyes grew wide.
Or at least it looked like Ned, with his hair short and darker, and a four-day growth on his chin.
“Don’t be scared.” Ned put up his hand. “No abductions this time, Ellie. I swear.”
Ellie wasn’t scared. Just angry and aware this time. Her training kicked in. Her eyes darted to her holster on the coatrack just inside the kitchen. This time, she was thinking, she was going to be the one in control.
She bolted toward the kitchen. Ned ran after, catching her by the arm. “Ellie, please . . .”
She spun wildly in his grasp. “Goddammit, Ned, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Guess I thought, given all the publicity”—he held back a smile—“your office just didn’t seem the place to meet.”
Ellie tried to pull away one more time, but he held her firmly, but not too hard. “I need to talk to you, Ellie. Just hear me out.”
She felt an urge to try and throw him, to go for the gun, but she had to admit that a tiny part of her was actually pleased, pleased that he was all right, anyway. That he was there. In her skintight suit, with his hand on her, she felt a little embarrassment take hold. She was blushing now. “What the hell are you doing, Ned?”
“I’m trusting you, Ellie. That’s what I’m doing. I’m showing you the new look. So what do you think?”
“I think when you get out of prison, you’ll be a helluva candidate for Extreme Makeover.” She pulled against him.
Ned relaxed his grip. “What I meant was, maybe you could start to trust me, too.”
She stood there, glaring at him. Part of her still wanted to make a run for the gun. The other part knew he wouldn’t even try to stop her. “It’s hard to trust you, Ned. Every time I do, someone else you’re connected to seems to turn up dead. You don’t just show up here like this. I’m a federal agent, not your AOL buddy. What the hell makes you think I won’t arrest you?”
“One thing,” he said, still holding her arm.
“What?” she asked, glaring back at him.
He let go of her arm. “I think you believe me, Ellie.”
Ellie took another quick glance toward the gun, but she knew it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going for it. Ned was right. She did believe him. She felt her body coil up with frustration. Then she finally gave in, staring into his eyes. “Did you kill that woman, Ned?”
“Tess?” He shook his head. “No.”
“And your brother? What happened to him?”
“All I did was go see him. That was after I met with my father. Ellie, my brother was dead when I got there. My brother, Ellie. Whoever did it was waiting for me. Nearly killed me, too. Someone sent him, Ellie. He thought I had the paintings. I still don’t even know who he was.”
“His name was Anson. He was a two-bit enforcer from south Florida with a record a mile long.”
“So, don’t you see . . . that proves it. Someone sent him from here.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “You live in south Florida, don’t you, Ned?”
“You really think I knew him, Ellie?” He reached into his pocket and came out with a folded-up piece of paper. “Look, I have something to show you.”
She recognized it instantly. The page ripped out of the art book. Van Gogh’s Dr. Gachet.
“Dave was trying to show me this when he was killed. He wasn’t trying to turn me in. He was trying to help me, Ellie.” Ned’s eyes were like some helpless, pleading child’s. “I’ve got nowhere to go, Ellie. Gachet’s real. You have to help me find him.”
“I’m a federal agent, Ned. Don’t you get it?” She touched his arm. “I’m sorry about your brother. I truly am. But the only way I can help is for you to turn yourself in.”
“I think we both know it’s a little late for that.” Ned leaned back against the porch rail. “I know everyone figures I took the art. Tess, Dave . . . my prints are all over the place. You want the truth, Ellie. It’s not about that anymore—clearing myself. Whoever sent that sonuvabitch to kill Dave was looking for the art. We both know that no one’s going to continue looking if they have me.”
“Will you please get real, Ned.” Ellie felt tears of frustration biting at her eyes. “I can’t join up with you. I’m with the FBI.”
“Get real, huh, Ellie?” Ned seemed to sink. “You don’t think every day I wake up and wish this wasn’t real. . . .” He backed off to the edge of the porch. “I made a mistake coming here.”
“Ned, please, you can’t go back out there now.”
“I’m gonna find out who set us up, Ellie.”
Ned jumped off the deck and Ellie realized her heart was beating wildly. She didn’t want him to leave. What could she do? Make a play for the gun. Was she going to shoot him?
He stood on the ground and winked up at her on the porch in her dripping wetsuit, his gaze drifting to the kayak. “
Nice board. What is it, a Big Yak?”
“No,” Ellie said, shaking her head. “A Scrambler.”
He nodded approvingly. The lifeguard, right. Then he started to back away into the night.
“Ned!” Ellie called.
He turned around. For a second they stood staring at each other.
She shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I liked you better blond.”
Chapter 53
WHEN DENNIS AND LIZ STRATTON threw a party, the A list people came, or at least the people who thought they were A list.
Ellie had no sooner walked through the door than a fashionably clad waiter put a tray of caviar canapés in front of her and she was face-to-face with some of the prominent people in Palm Beach art society, or so they would tell you. Reed Barlow, who owned a gallery on Worth Avenue, leading around a gorgeous blonde in a low-cut red dress. Ellie recognized a stately white-haired woman who owned one of the more ostentatious collections in town, with a tanned man half her age on her arm, a “walker.”
Ellie felt a little uncomfortable just to be there. All the women were dressed in designer gowns with major-league jewels, and she was in an off-the-rack black dress with a cashmere cardigan wrapped around her shoulders. Her one accommodation was the diamond solitaire studs her grandmother had left her. But in this room no one would notice.
She waded deeper into the house. Champagne seemed to flow at almost every turn. Magnums of Cristal, which Ellie knew cost hundreds of dollars a bottle. And caviar—a huge bowl rested in the hand-carved body of a swan sculpted in ice. In the den a quintet of string players from a Florida symphony. A photographer from “The Shiny Sheet” getting the ladies to jut a hip, angle a leg, turn on their brightest, whitest smiles. All this for charity, of course.
Ellie caught a glimpse of Vern Lawson, the Palm Beach head of detectives, standing stiffly on the edge of the crowd, wearing an earpiece. Probably racking his brains over what she was doing there. And along the walls stood at least five barrel-chested men in tuxedos, hands behind their backs. Stratton must have hired half the off-duty cops in Palm Beach as security.
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