Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  “Maybe it isn’t even yours,” I offered, just to be contrary.

  “It isn’t. I rented it.”

  Ken pounced on that. “Why?” he snapped. “Why rent a boat?”

  “Exploring.” Josh put on a wicked grin, his body slouching into sexy satyr mode. “And I was hoping to have some company. You know, anchor behind a mangrove island, a loaf of bread, a jug of wine . . .”

  An explanation that might have been acceptable if he hadn’t looked straight at me as he said it. Ken’s tan darkened by a couple of shades; his body language moved from hostile to on-the-brink-of-attack.

  “So why are we all standing here?” I asked. Briskly.

  “I would have checked it out,” Josh tossed at Ken like a challenge, “but I figured you’d want to do it yourself. Or are you passing the job to a uniform?” he added sweetly.

  I saw Ken’s fists clench. So did Josh’s, but he never moved. It was almost as if he stuck out his chin and dared Ken to hit him. Darkness and Light, with a Great Divide between.

  Ken peeled off his jacket and handed it to me; gun and shoulder holster followed. He emptied his pants pockets—wallet, car keys, coins. I tucked them into his jacket. He took off his shoes and socks. Josh and I followed him across the lawn until he jumped down from the seawall into the shallows below.

  I felt guilty. Ken was probably waiting for the harbor patrol, and I’d let Josh taunt him into going out there by himself. Not smart. For all we knew . . .

  He was almost to the sandbar, the water up to his thighs, when one of my nastier moments of intuition hit me so hard I was nauseous. “Tell him to come back,” I gasped to Josh as I doubled over. “Now!”

  I give Josh credit, he didn’t stop for questions. He yelled, waved his arms in the universal signal of “Come back!” He then semaphored the crossed-hands wave of “Abort, Abort!” Ken was moving onto the sandbar, now in water only up to his ankles. I recovered enough to add my own shouts of warning and waving arms.

  Stupid, stupid overreaction. The boat was empty. It had drifted away from Josh’s dock.

  And anchored itself just off the sandbar.

  Sure it had.

  Ken, hands on hips, turned to stare at us. I could practically hear him thinking, What the hell?

  The boat blew up. Debris shot in all directions as a plume of black smoke rose from the center of the cockpit. Ken pitched forward into the water, and didn’t move. Josh, flinging aside his shoes, hit the water on the run. As he splashed and plowed his way across that hundred feet of bay, whatever was in the bottom of the boat continued to burn with the intensity only an accelerant could provide. Ken was still lying in the water, face down.

  By the time Josh had hauled Ken out and applied a little rough and ready emergency treatment, while kneeling on the now almost completely exposed sandbar, there was nothing left of the boat. That ominous canvas mound that had been burning so fiercely in the cockpit had sunk in the deeper water beyond the sandbar. Vanishing in something more lethal than a Viking funeral. Was it a body? Only divers would be able to find out.

  Ken Parrish, as stalwart as his looks implied, was able to make it back to shore on his own two feet. The handshake he offered Josh Thomas wasn’t even grudging. I hoped his gratitude would count for something when he got around to questioning Josh about whatever was in the boat.

  Needless to say, by this time a large crowd had gathered. Even the Bellman museums and mansion couldn’t compete with an explosion on Sarasota Bay. The terrace and lawn in front of the Casa Bellissima looked rather like the mass of spectators at a golf tournament. Very reluctantly, I went back to work, though not before offering Josh the most sincere words we’d exchanged since we met. If I’d tried to rescue Ken, he might have drowned. Josh had moved like lightning. It was not a moment when I cared to recall that he was Number Three on my suspect list. Correction. Number Two. This latest incident had moved Billie to the bottom, if not off the list altogether.

  Would Josh have saved Ken if I hadn’t been there?

  Nasty, insidious thought.

  I drove my tram, shamelessly craning my neck each time I passed the salvage operations. But the crowd remained a dense curtain which occasionally shifted but never enough for me to see. My passengers, however, were eager to share their news. An unidentifiable something had surfaced with the divers, only to be discreetly body-bagged on the far side of the harbor patrol boat. Josh and Ken, of course, were somewhere in the middle of it all, probably back out on the sandbar, watching every move. While Rory drove her blasted tram and railed against the inequities of the world.

  I didn’t snap at my passengers, but it was hard.

  Not surprisingly, by the time the patrol boat chugged off, the crowd dispersed, and the bevy of patrol cars crept back out of the Bellman grounds, Josh and Ken sloshed up from the beach, apparently the best of friends. I could feel them getting ready to give the long-suffering little woman a nice pat on the head. I might have refrained from snapping at the museum visitors, but nothing was guaranteed with these two.

  But, of course, Ken—brown hair stiff and tousled, trailing water with every barefoot step—swooped down and planted a very satisfactory kiss on my lips, even if Sarasota Bay doesn’t taste quite as fresh and tangy as the Gulf of Mexico. “A few steps closer and that body bag would have been for me,” he said. “How about dinner?”

  “The three of us,” Josh qualified. “Say, eight o’clock, when we’ve had time to change.”

  Slowly, Ken unfolded from tram height to his full five-eleven. He did his best to look down on Josh who was at least an inch taller. Camaraderie vanished on the instant. “What makes you think I had a trio in mind?” he bristled.

  “You didn’t. I did,” Josh returned with deliberate insouciance. “There are a lot of questions that need discussion.” He offered his satyr smile. “And, besides, don’t you want to talk to me? It was my boat.”

  “Mike’s Place, eight o’clock,” I interjected before the crackling atmosphere could deteriorate any further. “Josh’s right,” I said, wrapping my hand around one of Ken’s clenched fists, “we’re all three professionals, and maybe if we put our heads together . . .”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ken growled. “Professional what?”

  “Believe me,” Josh retorted, stung into a rare display of emotion, “if I had a dead body on my hands, I wouldn’t have blown it up in my own boat.”

  Professional what? A question that fit me as well. Agent ex officio, that was Rory Travis. Blithely out on a limb, tackling simple pranks that had turned into murder and plunged me way beyond my present capabilities. Yet what had I been before? A great lump, as dead in the water as Josh’s boat.

  And I wasn’t operating solo. My collaborators were, in fact, rather stunningly competent. If Josh was one of the Good Guys, we might actually make some progress on this case. If he wasn’t . . . then maybe Ken and I could find the scratch on his perfect façade, the peephole into the soul of the satyr, who seemed to be playing us for all he was worth.

  Oh, shit! That was a thought I didn’t want to have.

  “Are we agreed?” I asked too brightly. “Mike’s at eight?”

  “I’ll pick you up at—” They both spoke at once.

  I should have insisted on independence, but I heard myself say to Ken, “Josh has to drive right by the Ritz. We’ll meet you there.”

  I had not thought anyone could look more pokerfaced than Josh Thomas, but Ken Parrish managed it. Unthinkingly, I’d made it Us vs. Him. Which hadn’t been my intention at all. Ken was my Rock of Gibraltar, the one perfectly reliable person in this whole darn mess. I liked him. I liked Josh, too, but I was too smart to trust him.

  “Mike’s at eight,” Ken growled and strode off toward his SUV.

  “I’ll ride out with you,” Josh said. “I’m parked in the lot across the street.” He came ’round to the passenger side of my tram and climbed in. Déja vu. No lightning or thunder, but the sun, partially obscured by clouds, was close to setting,
and the entire Bellman grounds seemed shrouded in gloom. The crowds were gone, the docents were gone; even the daytime security guards were heading out. The palms swayed in the sea breeze, as did the sausages on the sausage tree. The giant banyans, which cast welcome shade in the sunlight, took on a sinister cast.

  I was halfway back to the Art Museum before I found my voice. “Josh—”

  “I didn’t do it, Rory. Have I killed people? Yes. Have I always been on the right side of the law? No. “Did I come here because of Parker St. Clair’s problems? Partly. Did I kill that poor kid in the lion cage? No. Did I slit Rob Varney’s throat?” No. Hell, I don’t even know whose body was in that boat. Do you hear me, Travis? I didn’t do it.”

  “Sorry, but lying through your teeth is also part and parcel of your job.”

  As always when I was stubborn, Josh retreated into himself, not saying another word. When I stopped at the Art Museum, he loped off up the sidewalk without a backward glance.

  It was going to be an interesting dinner. I wondered if an upscale restaurant like Mike’s Place had a bouncer.

  Chapter 19

  They cleaned up well, the two of them. Heads turned as the three of us walked the length of the dining room to our table. I rather enjoyed the glimpses of envy I saw on a number of female faces, even some gray-haired seniors. Men like Josh Thomas and Ken Parrish are few and far between. I rather suspected it had taken considerable connivance by certain octogenarians of my acquaintance to place me smack-dab between them.

  With Thanksgiving less than a week away, the Sarasota population was increasing by leaps and bounds. Mike’s Place was crowded, serious conversation impossible, so we settled for social chitchat. Ken had a younger sister, who was married and had made him an uncle to a boy and a girl of less than school age. He had a younger brother still in college in Gainesville. His parents lived where they always had, on one of Sarasota’s quiet older streets. The whole family would be home for Thanksgiving.

  I looked expectantly at Josh. Both men looked at me. I admitted to an older brother, still unmarried, and parents living on the Connecticut shoreline. We deviated briefly into colleges. Ken, too, had attended the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Brown, then Yale law,” I muttered. Ken whistled. Josh just looked mysterious. I suspected there was very little about me he didn’t already know.

  Ken and I both turned to Josh. I put my elbows on the table, rested my chin on my locked fingers. “Well?” I said.

  Our reply was Josh signaling the waiter for the bill. “How about the Cà d’Zan bar?” he said. “We can talk there.”

  Eager to get to the true meat of the evening—and maybe learn something about Josh Thomas as well—we were back at the Ritz in less than fifteen minutes. Ken took one of the tall leather wingchairs by a window, leaving Josh and me to arrange ourselves on the comfortable sofa set a right angles to the chair. I had to give the city detective credit. There was little doubt that, unintimidated by a federal agent or an international spook, he was setting himself up as Chairman of the Board.

  “You were saying?” I challenged Josh.

  His reply was postponed yet again by the arrival of the waiter. But his response, when it came, wasn’t very satisfactory. “How about Stanford, Oxford, and the Sorbonne?” he said.

  “Nice choice,” I commended dryly, wondering if any of the three had ever heard of him, by the name Josh Thomas or any other.

  Ken leaned forward and, keeping his voice low, brought the meeting of our ad hoc Bellman Investigation Committee to order. “You should know,” he said, “that Parker St. Clair doesn’t like you two.”

  “I scarcely know him,” I protested.

  “Ah, but his girlfriend has been telling him all about your inquiries into their romance. Of course, he didn’t mention your campaign to save Hamlin’s neck, but it may be that’s the real reason he’d like to see you hung by your toes.”

  “At least you talked to him,” I grumbled.

  “And his wife,” Ken supplied. For just a moment his pokerface wavered. His talk with Melinda St. Clair had not been without fruit, I’d almost bet on it.

  “And you,” Ken said oh-so-smoothly to Josh. “St. Clair really hates someone named Anthony Johns. Does that name sound familiar?”

  “I assume you know damn well it does.”

  “Would you care to tell us about it?” Ken made a show of looking around. Our corner of the Cà d’Zan bar was completely secluded. “I believe we are sufficiently private now.”

  I found myself a spectator at a duel. Josh and Ken were locked eyeball to eyeball, except that Ken had managed to seat himself where he could look down on his adversary. A clever move. I, however, might as well have been upstairs, watching television with Aunt Hy. Or at least it seemed that way.

  “Josh Thomas is just a name, one of many,” said the black-haired satyr sitting beside me so close I could feel the warmth of his body.

  “And Anthony Johns?”

  “I was christened Anthony.”

  “Anthony what?”

  Josh—Anthony—hesitated, then did the unexpected. He took my hand and held it as he said, “Gianelli. Yes, that Gianelli. But my father got bitten by the patriotic bug and went off to ’Nam. He ended up working for the CIA. Long story you don’t need to know.”

  “But grandpa was a don, right?”

  “The don,” said the man beside me. “I loved the old boy,” he added with an edge to his voice. “He was quite a character.”

  Ken bent his blond head, a single finger tapping the tan leather arm of the chair. “I’m not stupid enough to get into ancient history,” he said at last. “But right now, at this moment, Anthony Johns is how you sign your checks. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Parker St. Clair seems to consider you some kind of rival who’s out to get him.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Yes.” Josh’s slash of a mouth stopped moving.

  I squeezed his hand hard. “You can’t stop now,” I protested. “Tell us what’s going on.” At that moment his magic was working well. Simple hand contact had frizzed my brain. Once again, I’d completely forgotten the man once known as Josh Thomas was second on my suspect list.

  “Believe me, I would if I could,” Josh said. “But it makes no more sense to me than it does to you. I did actually come here on vacation, although I admit I intended to keep an eye on St. Clair while I was here. The organization I work for would like to contribute to the investigation to bring him down. He’s definitely not one of the good guys.”

  “And you are?” Ken scoffed.

  “I’m not as bad as St. Clair,” Josh qualified carefully.

  “Why here for vacation?” Ken demanded.

  Josh shrugged. “Why not?”

  Martin had sent for him. Of that I was certain. And I suspected the reason was personal. Job-making for poor Rory? Or was it matchmaking?

  “So, tell me,” Ken said, “how did the damn boat blow up just as I got there?”

  “Someone had to be watching,” I said. “Someone who only had to wait for the right moment and press a button.”

  “But I’d stopped.”

  “Yes, and anyone could also see Josh and I were signaling ‘Danger, come back.’ The odds were, that was as close as you were going to get. So—boom!—he set it off.”

  “Madame Celestine wins the day,” Josh drawled.

  I jerked my hand from his grasp and put six inches between us on the sofa, while regretting I’d ever told him the tale of Aunt Hy and her obsession with the television psychic.

  “Rory doesn’t appreciate her gift,” Josh said, ignoring me and talking man-to-man with Detective Ken Parrish, “but the demo was truly impressive.” He held up his hand, palm out. “I’m now a true believer.”

  “Well, believe it doesn’t happen on cue,” I snapped with considerable bitterness. “I hadn’t a clue the night my partner was killed.”

  Josh grabbed my hand back. We wrestled, briefly, before I gave in.
/>   “In any event, I’m grateful,” Ken said. “To both of you. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”

  Understood. Josh and I nodded.

  “So you think somebody watched the boat all day, waiting for the right moment?” Ken asked.

  “Looks like it,” I said. “Josh, didn’t you say Parker St. Clair lives near there? Could he see the boat from his house?”

  “Wouldn’t even need binoculars.”

  “You know,” I said, “I seem to recall that Richard Bellman lost a couple of big yachts. One sank and the other burned.”

  “Another artful murder?” Even Josh sounded surprised. Or was it all another big put-on? Had the man whose touch was raising my blood pressure reverted to his dubious ancestry? Was he, after all, capable of the cold-blooded murders of Lydia Hewitt, Rob Varney, possibly Tim Mundell . . . and whoever had been in that boat today? If he had enough reason, I was very much afraid he was. Sicilian blood can run as cold and deep as it could be hot and passionate.

  “So it all ties in,” Ken murmured.

  “And is just as damned much of a mystery,” said Josh, “as it’s been all a—”

  Ken’s cell phone rang. Josh and I waited, our bodies tensing into eager alert as Ken’s pokerface crumbled to surprise, dismay . . . and guilt.

  He snapped the phone closed, staring off into space for a moment before turning back to his impatient audience. “When I interviewed Melinda St. Clair,” he told us, “I had the feeling she was on the verge of telling me a good deal more. I talked to her at her house, very informally. I didn’t feel I had cause to press her, so I let it go for another time.” For a moment Ken steepled his fingers in front of his face. “It was a mistake,” he said at last. “They’ve identified the body. It was Melinda St. Clair.”

  Beside me, I heard Josh catch his breath. “Martin’s going to have a major guilt-attack.”

  “That makes two of us,” Ken said. “I could almost swear she was going to talk, and yet I never thought he’d kill her. I mean, the man’s a pillar of the community. I’m sorry,” he added on a rush. “I deal with domestic violence and drug dealers, some pretty bad stuff, but true evil caught me with my pants down.”