Part 2 (2/2)

I said, ”We will. We just don't know what it is yet.”

A few quiet seconds pa.s.sed before Susan's head snapped up from the impact of a sudden thought. ”Tom! Shouldn't we be over there to follow those painter-guys when they leave?”

”Nope.”

”Why not? They've got to be connected some way with the murder. If we followed them...”

I sat up and put my elbows on my knees and looked at Susan. ”If we followed them, they'd probably spot us a mile down the road. Neither of us is qualified to do that kind of thing well. And, if Tim and Sonny did spot us tagging along behind their pickup, we could count on one of two things happening. One, they would know we were on to them, which would cause them to take off down some swamp road to the middle of nowhere and hide. Or, two, they would know we were on to them, which would cause them to turn around and attempt to do us bodily harm. In either case, we've announced that I didn't buy their good-old-boy routine at the cottage. And, in one case, we could end up hurt or worse.”

”You're sure about this?”

”I've got the tag number and make of the truck, their descriptions, and the names they gave us. This is a small place. If we need to find them again, I imagine Joey can do it in an hour or two.”

Susan and I wandered out onto the deck. Frustration and feelings of impotency seemed to be working on her, and I felt pretty much the same way. Maybe I was handling it better because, for a lot of reasons, the feelings were less foreign to me. Finally, we decided to load into my Jeep to go have another look at See Sh.o.r.e Cottage.

We made a reconnaissance trip past the cottage and saw that Tim's truck had departed taking Tim and Sonny and the plastic paint buckets with it. I turned around in a driveway three doors down, backtracked, and pulled onto the now-familiar parking pad of Carli's nightmare house. We got out. For the second time that day, I approached the giant-seahorse-guarded door of See Sh.o.r.e Cottage with the intention of conducting some sort of investigation. Through the front bedroom window, we could see that the paint job was lousy but finished, the drop cloths had vanished, and the bed and other furniture had been shoved back into place. Susan said, ”Poof.”

”Yeah. Like magic.” I walked around to the side window to peer inside the way Carli had the night before.

Susan said, ”Look at the floor.” I cupped my hand against the gla.s.s to block the sun's glare and looked down at bare, paint-splattered concrete. ”You think they're coming back later to put down new carpet?”

She was being sarcastic. I said, ”I wouldn't count on it.”

I drove Susan to her beach house. Along the way, a running debate streamed through my minda”should I stay on St. George with Susan and the girl or head back to Mobile? On the one hand, I didn't much like the idea of leaving Susan and Carli alone on the island. Emotionally, it felt like I was deserting them. On the other hand, my surprise meeting with Tim and Sonny had turned my presence into a liability. As we turned into Susan's driveway, I decided that putting some distance between my clients and myself seemed the smartest way to go.

I explained my reasoning to Susan. She agreed and promised to keep an eye on Carli. I promised to try to think of something useful to do.

It had not been a successful day, and the drive home seemed endless. Back at my place, I checked in with Kelly, my secretary, and made a few business calls before wandering down the beach to the Grand Hotel for dinner. I thought a good meal might make me feel better. It usually does. It didn't. Back snug in my living room, I checked my answering machine, turned the recording volume and the ringer all the way down, and spent a couple of unfocused hours with Umbrto Eco. The h.e.l.l with it. I started getting ready for bed. Maybe I'd wake up smarter in the morning.

Twenty minutes later, I heard a fist banging on my front door. I trotted downstairs, flipped on the porch light, and peeked outside through a narrow column of windows. Joey stood there glaring at the door, looking angry and excited all at once. I opened the door.

”Where the h.e.l.l have you been? We called Susan. She said you left there hours ago.”

”I've been here. I just turned the sound off on my machine. What's wrong?” In the half second before he could answer, I had a sickening thought. ”Is Carli okay?”

”Carli's fine. Everybody's fine. But Kelly's been trying to get you for over an hour. Somebody broke in your office. Kelly says the security company called her. She's down there now with the cops, and they need you to come down.”

I said, ”Hang on,” and went inside to get my shoes. Two minutes later, I was seated in Joey's huge four-wheel-drive, and he was speeding toward Mobile. I looked out the window and watched pine trees and underbrush spin by in the dark. Joey asked about my trip to St. George, and I filled him in.

As we entered the city's neon outskirts, talk turned to the break-in, and Joey said, ”One more crummy thing in a crummy day, huh?”

”Maybe not.”

”You like having somebody break in your office?”

”Not much. But at least something's happening. I sat around all day down at Susan's drinking coffee and wondering what to do next. I did learn a few things from the painters. But now, at least, the coincidences are starting to pile up, and we can begin trying to make some sense out of it.”

”That all sounds real good. But somebody still busted in your office tonight and probably took some of your favorite lawyer stuff.”

”Lawyer stuff?”

Joey didn't elaborate.

We were on city streets now, close to the Oswyn Israel Building where my violated office and, I hoped, some answers awaited. I said, ”I'm going to call Susan and tell her to get hold of Carli, maybe bring her to the beach house and lock everything up tight until we can think this out.”

”Probably a good idea. Susan got a gun?”

”I have no idea.”

I used Joey's cell phone to get Susan. She promised to pick up Carli from work and keep her at the beach house. Susan reminded me of the guard at the gate to The Plantation and said she also had a .38 revolver. I hung up as Joey turned into my parking lot.

Upstairs, Kelly was waiting in the reception area. She said, ”Looks like they got scared off.”

A pair of blue uniforms lounged on the sofa drinking coffee that I guessed Kelly had brewed for them in my new Krups machine. One of the officers started to stand. I said, ”Let me look around first, okay?” He nodded and sat back down. His was not a controlling personality. As I walked back to my office, I asked Kelly, ”Nothing's missing?”

Kelly followed. ”Almost nothing.”

I made a quick inventory of the desk drawers, the small wall safe, and the few expensive odds and ends on my walls and shelves. I sat down behind my desk to think. Joey strolled in holding a mug of steaming coffee in each giant paw and put one down in front of me. Then he plopped into a leather guest chair and sipped his coffee. Kelly sat in a chair that matched the one Joey was overflowing, looked across the desk, and said, ”The policemen want you to sign some kind of report. They couldn't find any fingerprints or anything like that, by the way.”

I said, ”What do you mean 'almost nothing' is missing?”

”What? Oh. It's creepy. Right now, it looks like whoever broke in just grabbed the appointment calendar off my desk and took off.”

”Your appointment calendar? Are you sure that's all?”

”I've got to look around some more, but, like I said, right now that looks like it.”

A shapeless, but vaguely disturbing, thought was worming around the back of my mind. I let it work through, and my stomach began to squeeze into a knot.

”Kelly, did you put Susan Fitzsimmons' name in the appointment book today?”

”Sure. I put all your appointments in there.”

Joey cussed as he and I jumped up and ran out of the office. As we rushed through the waiting room, the two cops looked surprised. They didn't move, but they did appear to consider the option.

chapter five.

Joey was a former sh.o.r.e patrolman, former Navy Intelligence officer, former Alabama state trooper, and former Alabama Bureau of Investigation agent. In fact, former would serve as a pretty accurate one-word description of his career in law enforcement, all of which sounds worse in some ways than it is. Joey was never unreliable, unless you were counting on him to follow orders or to treat an employee handbook like the Word of G.o.d. And, when things get serious, att.i.tude and obstinance and confidence are what I want. Boy Scouts scare the s.h.i.+t out of me.

Now, on the highway east of Mobile, Joey was driving like the cop he used to be, going ninety-plus on two-lane roads. And, like a cop, he seemed to be in complete control behind the wheel as trees, houses, shops, and other traffic whirled by as varying shapes and colors in the night.

”She's not there.” It was the fourth time I had punched in Susan's St. George number.

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