A DANGEROUS HARBOR

by RP Dahlke

  If Myne's narrowed eyes were twin barrels, she would've shot him full of holes. "Ain't there some judge you can bribe?"

  He thoughtfully tapped a forefinger to his lips, perhaps considering who was left to bribe at this late date.

  Sadly shaking his head, he said, "Tempting as that might be, I'm sorry, señorita, but the opportunity for good will has already passed. They found the gun, you know."

  "Oh no! He can't stay in jail, it'll kill him."

  The lawyer tipped a canny eyebrow at the obvious playacting. "Of course, if you have any evidence that would prove him innocent…?"

  Myne flicked the tip of her little pink tongue at the corner of her mouth. "I… I don't know anything Are they sure it's his gun? They got prints and stuff?"

  The lawyer gave her a cool once-over and something flashed behind his eyes, perhaps a reappraisal of how lucrative this arrangement could be. He moved the tissue box closer to her side of the desk and said, "I'm sorry, but at this time, it appears that he will be charged. However," he said, nodding at her checkbook, "if you would be so kind as to write out the check for my retainer, I will see what I can do." He then pushed a piece of paper with a number on it across the desk, clearly expecting her to fill it into her checkbook. Myne leaned forward to peer at it, again giving him an eyeful of her very abundant chest.

  The lawyer stood up, shot his initialed cuffs, and strapping on his expensive watch, indicated an end to the meeting. "If there is anything more that I can do for you," he said, coming around the desk to grasp her small hand between both of his, "please feel free to call my office at any time."

  Myne, her lips tight around her teeth, yanked her hand out of his, hiked her bag up onto her shoulder, and without a backward glance, marched out of his office.

  At the secretary's desk, she ripped out the check, signed it, and said, "Tell him to fill in any ol' number he wants. And tell him he'd better be worth it, or he'll answer to Spencer Bobbitt's friends!"

  Out on the street, Myne clutched at Katy's arm. "That asshole lawyer good as said Spencer's goose is cooked."

  "It's the gun, Myne, they have his prints on it."

  "But he could still be innocent, couldn't he?"

  "Sure," Katy said, impressed that Myne saw the lawyer for the bottom feeder that he was. "If something or someone comes forward with evidence to prove he didn't do it."

  Myne shook her head. Then she giggled, the giggle turning into laughter until she was almost doubled over with it, holding onto her stomach with one hand and Katy with the other while she gulped out the words. "If… if I'd done it like Spencer told me… take him his checkbook first, so he could sign it for the lawyer's retainer… I never do it right… and this is so funny! I told that son of a bitch to write in his own number, but if he writes it for more than two hundred dollars it'll bounce."

  "That would be funny… only…"

  "What?" Myne's effervescent mood dissipated like bubbles on the air.

  "Well. If it bounces, what's your back-up plan… if this lawyer quits?"

  "Oh, shit. I guess we better go see Spence and get his John Hancock for that son of a bitch crook he's got for a lawyer."

  Katy shot her a look. "Pot calling the kettle black?"

  "Oh." She giggled again. "You're right about that."

  "Then let's just hope that the lawyer has less soot on him than Spencer Bobbitt."

  Chapter Eighteen:

  Katy watched the jailer lead Myne over to an elevator and punch the UP button for her. Myne dimpled sweetly for the officer then turned to give Katy a tremulous smile and a thumbs-up.

  She managed to return the gesture without screaming, "I'm not your girlfriend! I'm Raul Vignaroli's personal spy!"

  Determined to find the chief and end this charade, she backed up and tripped over his outstretched feet.

  He reached out a hand to steady her, and the heat of the connection snapped and crackled but he didn't let go until she looked down at his hand on her arm and her eyebrow moved up a notch.

  "So," she said, "we should talk."

  He thumbed over his shoulder. "Not here, please," and with a proprietary hand at her back ushered her down the hallway to his office.

  Katy momentarily stiffened at the intimacy of his broad hand heating up her body but waited to break the contact until they moved through the door.

  Inside, they each took their appropriate seats; Raul behind his desk, still littered with piles of folders, and Katy on the hard plastic chair in front of it. On the wall was the same kind of big school house clock that only a short week ago inched painfully through the hours of her life.

  He laced his fingers together and said, "He didn't deny that it was his weapon and his fingerprints are on it."

  "Anyone else's?"

  "No."

  She sat forward in her chair. "Time, water, weather will deteriorate any viable prints."

  His dark eyes held hers for a moment longer and then he smiled. "Did you know that fingerprinting analysis was discovered by an Argentinian by the name of Juan Vucetich in 1891?"

  "Fascinating, but you still don't think he did it, do you?"

  "What I think doesn't stand up to the evidence, the gun, his prints."

  "I hear that the FBI is putting together a case against Wallace Howard."

  He leaned back in his chair. "Yes, but it is Spencer Bobbitt who is of interest to my government, and subsequently how I became involved with this investigation. Your government wants to be sure of his innocence before they have him extradited back to the States."

  "Spencer is a con artist and a fraud but he has no priors so what's their interest?"

  "They weren't, until his accountant Wallace Howard offered them information about a shipment of stolen case-goods to be transported across the border, which of course were packed with guns and drugs because that's what the Sinaloa Cartel does when they transport anything in trucks. Naturally, the FBI alerted our federal task force and the shipment was seized."

  Then she remembered Wally begging Myne to let him take care of her because Spencer would no longer be her benefactor. So Wally had a backbone after all. "Wally found a way to get out from under Spencer's thumb after all."

  "Turning in his boss to the FBI would also get him immunity from prosecution.”

  "Ah, but Spencer Bobbitt did not get where he is by allowing others to get the upper hand."

  "Yes? What is it you're thinking, Katy?"

  "Wally tells Spencer he's retiring, has his game all in place, but Spencer finds out about it and turns the tables on Wally."

  "How?"

  "Don't know yet, but I'd bet my lunch money on it, because that retirement gift of a nice new sailboat turned out to be a wreck. Spencer's little joke and a message that Wally's plan was going to backfire on him."

  "And you think Wally killed the girl as revenge?"

  "Yes, I do. Booth knew the whole story and tried to blackmail him for it and died."

  "There's only one problem. Wally Howard has stomach ulcers and was in our local hospital that night."

  Katy blinked. "But he could've hired someone to do it like he hired that Mexican kid to push me off the cliff."

  Raul spent a few seconds absently-mindedly shuffling papers around on his desk, then stood up. "I see you brought Myne to see Spencer. I can arrange for you to talk to him, if you like."

  "I think I'll pass, at least for now," she said, disappointed that Raul didn't jump to the idea of Wally as the killer. If anything he seemed distracted.

  "Myne thought Jeff Cook was in love with her, but the guy's a gigolo…"

  "Mujiero," he added thoughtfully.

  "Yes, a womanizer. He's got a reputation for fleecing middle-aged women. He's also romancing Astrid Del Mar, the magician's assistant? You caught their gymnastics the night Booth was found in the water. And, if it means anything, Astrid is a pathological liar and a kleptomaniac… she stole my favorite scrunchy."

  "Scrunchy?" His quick smile caught her as a surprise.
<
br />   "Yes, like this one." She indicated the colorful, fuzzy band holding her ponytail.

  He tapped at the pile of paperwork on the desk, looked as if seeing it for the first time, and then asked, "Will you please have dinner with me tonight?"

  She searched his face for some hint of an answer to her questions, but Raul's eyes remained on her waiting for her answer. She looked at his hands resting on the desk and once again thought how much she liked his broad palms, the blunt fingers with their clean, pared nails.

  "Alright. Where?"

  "I will pick you up at the entrance to your marina tonight."

  "Italian again?"

  "Something different, if you will allow?"

  She hesitated, still annoyed that he wasn't taking her theories about Wally as the killer seriously enough, then shook it off. Tonight. Dinner. A break from all of this. She'd enjoyed the last one, hadn't she?

  "What time?"

  "I will be there at six-thirty, unless that is too early?"

  "No, that's fine, I'll be there."

  He didn't walk her out the door and back to where he found her in the waiting room; instead, he simply nodded at the pile of work on his desk.

  Katy returned the nod and left the way she'd come in, her footsteps echoing down the hall as she wondered at his sudden shift away from the investigation. When she got to the waiting room she saw Myne surrounded by Mexican cops and decided she needed to rescue her before she caused a minor riot amongst all the testosterone in the police station.

  She gingerly helped the wilted Myne into a cab and thought the girl had the look of a whipped puppy

  "He wasn't amused by the diamond earrings?"

  "I don't want to talk about it," Myne said, her voice squeaky with recent tears.

  She might've felt sorry for the girl, but then she remembered the helpless sixteen-year-old who'd been shot and tossed into the water to die.

  "Are you going to be okay?" Katy asked.

  "I… I don't know." She held up a folded check. "He signed a check to pay for the lawyer, but then I don't know what I'm going to do for money next week. He says he's broke."

  "I suppose you could sell those diamond earrings?"

  She brightened for a minute while she fingered the earrings, then gave Katy a rueful grin. "I would but they're not mine, they belong to Mrs. Bobbitt. He just lets expensive stuff like this sit around in drawers while I gotta look through his ol' pants pockets for food money."

  "Was it Jeff's idea for you to try the diamonds?"

  She shuddered and looked away. "I was a fool to think I could get away with it. Told me if I tried anything like that he'd have me fitted for cement shoes. He could do it, too. He has people who can do it for him. He can do anything he wants, even from jail."

  This only strengthened her conviction that Spencer hired the Mexican kid to try to kill her. "So, what do you think your chances are with Jeff, now that you don't have any money?"

  "I thought I knew. Right up to when he brought me that fish, banged me one last time and then tol' me he wasn't coming back unless…"

  That explained the hatchet job done on the Dorado.

  "Myne, you don't need Jeff Cook. He's not what he purports himself to be. He doesn't have a captain's license and he's not enrolled in a maritime academy, either. He's a part-time actor with a reputation for fleecing older women out of their money."

  Myne sat quietly for a moment, and then straightened, her eyes twinkling. "Does Astrid know?"

  "Uh, no, I haven't told her yet."

  She reached out and grabbed Katy's hands in both of hers, the bangles tinkling against her wrists. "I'll do anything, anything in the world, if only… please don't tell her about Jeff."

  She didn't dislike either of these girls, but she also didn't like the idea of a promise she might have to break.

  "I'll tell you what. If it doesn't cause any harm, I'll agree to keeping mum on the subject of Jeff's inadequacies."

  "Oh, you know about that too, huh? Well, I suppose sooner or later that would come out. And to think I tol' him size don't matter."

  Time to take her home, get a shower and meet Raul for dinner and see if she could get him to explain why her theory about Wally wasn't working.

  At the appointed hour, Raul turned into the hotel driveway and up to where Katrina waited under the shade of the portico. He got out, opened the passenger side and when she hesitated, said, "I think we can dispense with the chauffeur act from now on."

  He smiled as she swept aside her skirt, got into the car and buckled up.

  Behind the wheel, he pulled into traffic and adjusted the AC to her preference from last time.

  She nodded her thanks and asked, "So, where are we going?"

  "It's not far from here," he said taking a turnoff from the highway onto a mountainous road winding upward past gated properties. The car climbed up over hills until at last it glided along a high adobe wall and stopped at a gate with a bronze plaque on the wall that proclaimed this was Los Sueños. A touch of a button on his visor and the double gate slid open and the car moved quietly down a graveled path, then up and around a thick grove of olive trees until it opened up to an incredible view of the ocean below. She got a peek of a flat copper roofline jutting out from a cliff as the car swept down into a garage.

  With wonder in her voice, she asked, "Whose home is this?"

  "Mine. Come, I will show you the view," he said, getting out of the car and going around to her side, offered her a hand.

  Katrina hesitated. "And your wife…?"

  He bent down to her eye level. "Will you trust that I'm not leading you into the den of iniquity?"

  "That sounds like a dare, Raul—and you know what I'm talking about."

  "Yes, yes," he said, sighing. "And I promise you an answer that you will approve. Come, we will go around to the main entrance so that you will have the full effect of the view."

  He opened the front door and they stepped inside. The foyer was dark when they walked in, then hidden automatic recessed lighting warmed the room. Katy looked down to see that she was standing on a solid piece of black marble. It was still light enough for her to see beyond the entrance. And what she saw astounded her—the house appeared to be airborne with nothing to stand between her and the wide open sky.

  "An optical illusion," he said taking her arm. "It's a bit disconcerting when you see it the first time but if you step closer you'll see that it is only because the living room is sunken."

  Feeling disoriented, she kept close to Raul's and shuffled her feet along the solid cool marble until she came to the edge.

  Where before nothing existed but a great expanse of sky, now there were floor to ceiling windows and a wide living room with a sunken seating area.

  At the sound of his keys tumbling into an art glass bowl on a metal pedestal she was startled to hear a woman's voice calling, "Cena, querido!" And then there was the laughter of children.

  Shocked back into reality, she started to speak and the voice called again. This time she cocked her head. There was something about that voice; the timbre was the same in each call, but still… the lilting, modulated tones of a woman's voice, almost as if….

  Katy turned to him, a surprised smile on her lips. "Is that…?"

  "Come," he said, taking her hand, "I will introduce you."

  Chapter Nineteen:

  Katy followed Raul down a long hallway and into a modern open kitchen, complete with contemporary appliances, a butcher block island and a breakfast nook, which was occupied by a large wire cage. In it was what might or might not be a bird. It had the beak and the rounded head of a parrot, but except for some pin feathers on its head and wing tips, it was entirely bald.

  The bird whistled a greeting at Raul, then seeing a stranger, immediately turned a large yellow eye in her direction and stretched out a long wrinkled neck to inspect this newcomer. Somehow the result appeared to be less than satisfying and he opened his beak wide as if to say something, then seemed to change hi
s mind, and fluffing phantom feathers, turned his back on them and hunched his head down onto naked shoulders.

  "Wow," Katy breathed. "I've just been dissed by a bald parrot. What happened to his feathers?"

  Raul handed her a glass of red wine and said, "We'll discuss this in the living room, out of his hearing. He doesn't like people talking about him."

  Katy huffed out a quick laugh and saw that he was serious.

  "I think you will like the wine," he said. "It's from my family's vineyard."

  She lifted the stemmed glass and sniffed the heady bouquet. "Nice. Italian?"

  "My father brought vine cuttings from Italy and planted them here in the hills behind Ensenada. We already produce enough to export to the States."

  "This in addition to the cannery, your brother's fishing boats and your uncle's restaurant?"

  "I'm a very silent partner. My sisters run the winery and the vineyards," he said. Turning to the oven, he donned oven mitts large enough to be used in a glass blowing factory and extracted a hot dish.

  Katy breathed in the delicious-smelling casserole. "Lasagna's my favorite, and though the parrot has got the voice down pat, I presume he doesn't cook."

  He chuckled quietly and cutting even portions, served them onto plates. Then with a bowl of salad in one hand and his plate in the other, said, "The living room is back through that hallway and to your right, if you will carry your plate and my wine glass?"

  She nodded and silently moved out of the kitchen and down the hall to the huge sunken living room. A towering fireplace reached thirty feet above them and in front of it was a beige leather sectional and a shiny black marble coffee table complete with a cache of stubby lit candles and silverware for two wrapped in napkins on a couple of thick placemats.

  She set down her plate on the coffee table and giving the wine a swirl said, "Did you come home early to prepare all this then?"

  He put down his plate on the placemat and said, "My sister brings me dinners once a week and I asked her to bring enough for two tonight. Please. Sit and let's eat before this lovely meal is cold or I will never hear the end of it."