Hurricane Bay (10 page)

“Great. And you're still working with Larry Miller?”

“Yes. In fact, Larry was the one who got me the job.”

“Glad to hear it. You look wonderful.”

“Thanks. So do you. How is your business doing?”

“I'm happy with it. I've got two captains working for me now, so I don't have to take out every charter myself. It was a good way to create a company, but man…it made for some long hard hours and very little social life.”

She smiled. “Jorge, you were always the best worker, the go-getter. One day you'll probably have a fleet of ships to rival the navy, and captains for all of them.” She thought about Dane and the way he appeared to be spending his life in a lounge chair with a beer. She didn't know what had happened in St. Augustine that had made him close up shop, then close up life. But here was Jorge, who had certainly been as beaten up as any man alive when he was a little kid, and he just kept moving forward. “And you've done it all from nothing,” she added.

He looked at her peculiarly, almost as if he had been watching her mind working. “Remember where you are. Here we believe in smelling the flowers along the way, you know. We're in the Keys. Sun, sand and ocean breezes.”

“Alcohol and drugs,” she added.

“Well,” he said, his tone light, “there is a fine line between making a place in the world and forgetting that we only live in it so long. So, are you planning to take the world by storm? Eventually own every advertising agency in the state?”

She gave him a rueful grin. “No. I'm sorry, did I sound as if getting ahead was the only important thing in the world?”

Jorge shook his head. “I was just remembering how you loved to paint, and how you always had a camera, no matter what we were doing. Still painting?”

“I still have a camera most of the time. As for painting…”

She never finished the sentence. Cindy came out, blond hair pulled back, her workout tank damp, her muscles gleaming with a sheen of perspiration. “Jorge!” she said with pleasure. “I didn't see you in there.”

“I saw you, but you were lifting the equivalent of the Titanic, so I didn't interrupt,” Jorge said.

Cindy gave him a kiss on the cheek, still smiling. “We're going to have a barbecue at Dane's in a couple of hours. Why don't you come?”

He looked surprised. “Dane invited everyone over for a barbecue?”

“Yes,” Cindy said.

“No,” Kelsey corrected.

“Yes,” Cindy argued.

“We suggested he have one,” Kelsey said. She looked at Cindy. “And we're surprising him with the time and date. You don't think we'll be welcome? Have you seen much of him since he's been back down here?”

“Sure, everyone from the old crowd runs into everyone else down here, what with Nate owning the Sea Shanty,” Jorge said.

“Has he been…rude?” Kelsey queried.

“No, no, nothing like that. Quiet. Reclusive, maybe,” Jorge said. “I've respected his privacy, that's all.”

“Well, we're not going to let him be private anymore,” Cindy said firmly. “Show up. We're going to make him have a good time.”

“All right, maybe,” Jorge said. He wrinkled his nose. “I'm off to the showers. Kelsey, great to have you home.”

She wasn't really home, she thought. She was just passing through. “Thanks, Jorge.”

He left them, heading into the men's locker room. Cindy sighed in his wake. “He is
so
good-looking.”

“Yes, he is,” Kelsey agreed. “He hasn't married? He isn't seeing anyone?”

“He works,” Cindy said. “And I guess he sees lots of people. Oh, well, let's head out. We need showers, too,” she said ruefully. “I must smell like a trucker who's been on the road for a week.”

“You work out like a boxer aiming for the heavyweight championship,” Kelsey told her.

Cindy laughed. “Like I said, I think it has something to do with being short. Let's go, shall we? Showers, then barbecue shopping. Too bad Dane didn't really plan this. He'd have gone out and brought us back lots of fresh fish. Maybe there will be something fresh at one of the markets. Or maybe we'll just go with red meat. Or chicken. Or both.” She led the way out, hesitating as they exited the building. “I hope Jorge shows up,” she said.

 

Dane had thought that he would have to drive all the way into the city of Miami and meet Hector Hernandez in the downtown area, but Hector had suggested that they meet at the seafood restaurant at the southern end of Florida City. Being with the Metro force meant that Hector handled anything to the Miami-Dade county lines, and that meant the Trail into the Everglades out to Collier County to the west, and Monroe County at the line just before the Keys. Where they met was still Hector's territory, although his assignments were more often in the city of Miami proper and the surrounding communities.

There were enough murders there alone to keep plenty of men busy, Hector had told him once. Not that he felt his beloved county was so bad. Put that many people together and bad things happened. That was the way of life, unfortunately. Miami-Dade had a tendency to have its bad news well publicized. But Hector didn't believe that a
place
could be bad. Now, as to people, well, they could be pure evil. And it was true that South Florida had endless miles of coastline, miles and miles of Everglades and the capacity to include almost any illicit operation known to man. It was incredibly easy to get rid of a body.

Yet the bodies usually surfaced. Eventually.

Hector was already there when Dane arrived, munching down on a big plate of calamari, drinking iced tea.

He grinned when he saw Dane, rose, shook his hand, still chewing.

“Good to see you. Since you asked me to lunch, I thought I'd order everything on the menu. Got surf and turf coming after this. Filet and lobster. Maine lobster. Love this place we call home, you know, but our overgrown crawfish don't come anywhere near close to the taste of the Maine guys. You're going to get one hell of a lunch bill. Detectives are underpaid, you know. I hope your new business in the Keys is going well.”

He was a big man, resembling the old Frito Bandito.

“It's going all right,” Dane said. “People are into the high-tech stuff these days. Store owners want camera setups, surveillance, tapes, all the kinds of stuff they've seen catch thieves on the television shows.”

“Nothing too big, yet, huh?”

“You know life down there. A bit easier.”

Hector made a face. “It would be easier up here if it weren't for all the fancy attorneys. We nabbed a guy who killed his wife and kids a couple of years ago, and they got him off. You know what his defense was? He hadn't meant to kill them. He'd been threatening her because he was convinced she was cheating on him. And the gun just went off. Three times. All three shots somehow accidental. You listen to what I'm saying, and you know it's crazy. But he got the right attorney, and the jury bought it. Can you believe it?”

Hector sat down again when Dane did. “Then there was the old guy who beat the old lady to death in the nursing home. He got off, too. The defense? His medication was wrong. And the old lady wanted to die. It was a mercy killing. Oh, yeah, he beat her mercifully. What really bothers me, though, is what a bad rap the city gets. And you know what? One of those survey companies just did a study on crime in the city. Seems that a lot of crazies like to come down here to do their dirty work. They're born and get crazy somewhere in the north, then come south to be homicidal. Not that we don't have our share of domestics,” he said with a shake of his head. “Or greed. Stupid greed. I've got a case right now where some asshole shot an old man just to steal his car. That was a sorry one. The wife is inside, the husband goes out for the newspaper, sees the fellow trying to take his car and decides to stop him. The perp shoots the guy, gets blood on his clothes, goes inside the guy's house to steal a new outfit, and the wife is watching television all the time.”

“Did you nab him?”

“Not yet, but we will. He left his bloody clothes on the victim's floor and went out without the wife ever knowing. The perp was no brain surgeon. He left fingerprints everywhere and has a rap sheet longer than the Bill of Rights. But you see what I mean? He shouldn't have been on the streets at all. He should have been locked up. There are too many loopholes in the law. And the prisons are so overcrowded that the parole boards are pushed into letting criminals go when they shouldn't. But you know how all that goes. And you didn't come here to ask me about any of the no-brainers.”

Dane started to speak, but Hector lifted a hand. “Order first. Have the squid. They know their calamari here. Lightly dusted with breading, tender as a baby's bottom.”

Dane ordered the yellowtail, instead, guaranteed fresh by their waitress. He opted for iced tea, as well, and when the waitress had gone, he plowed right in. “I'm interested in one of your open cases.”

“The tie-strangling?” Hector said, wiping his mouth and reaching for his tea.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“One in Dade, one in Broward. They're what we've got going right now with the biggest media attention and the least to go on. Both girls were strippers. If you were friends with one of them, your name has never come up in the investigation. What's your interest?”

“A friend of mine, a girl named Sheila Warren, hasn't been seen around in about a week,” Dane said. He was going to stick with honesty while talking to Hector. The truth—just not the whole truth.

“Sheila…” Hector mused over the name for a moment. “Yeah, I know your friend Sheila. I've gone out on charters with your buddy Jorge Marti a few times when he had her aboard, cooking, running around, fishing…just being charming. Beautiful woman. Okay, before I keep going, is she a friend or more than a friend?”

“We were hot and heavy way back in the old days,” Dane told him. “But we've both changed a lot. She'd gotten used to living a bit on the wild side, and she's been known to take off with new friends, so the local police aren't very concerned.”

“But you are.”

“Yeah.”

Hector was quiet for a moment, mulling Dane's words as he chewed. Then he said, “I'm not sure where you're making the connection. Both girls strangled by the Necktie Strangler were strippers. And customers have gotten more than lap dances at both clubs by paying extra to have private ‘shows.' Your friend wasn't a working girl, was she?”

“No. But she was definitely walking the wild side.”

“So what makes you think the strangler might have gotten hold of her?”

“If I'm remembering correctly, both girls were missing persons before their bodies were discovered.”

“True. Look, we haven't had much to go on. The bodies were badly decomposed. We haven't found so much as a fiber to give to forensics. We've questioned the families, the friends and the other employees at the clubs. We've tracked down customers through interviewing the proprietors about their regulars and through credit card receipts. Have we found all the customers? Hell, no. A lot of guys won't use a charge card at a strip club—their wives might want to know what they were doing there. We've had plain clothes guys sit around both clubs, watching for weirdos. And do you know what we've gotten?”

“What?”

“A hell of a lot of weirdos. But not a single lead has panned out.”

Their waitress came to the table, delivering their food and refilling their glasses.

“I hope you're making the big bucks down there,” Hector said, looking at his plate with relish. “Look at that baby! A two-pounder. I was so hungry, I almost ordered the five-pound guy. But then I thought about the old arteries.”

Dane looked at Hector's plate. “I can see you're really concerned,” he said dryly.

Hector shook his head. “It's all right. I start out the day with oatmeal.” He waved a hand for the waitress. “I think I'm going to need a little more of that melted butter,” he told her.

Dane took a bite of his fish. It was fresh, and broiled to perfection. “I hear there are details about the murders that are being held back from the media.”

Hector had been smiling in delight at the succulent taste of his lobster. Now, he scowled. “Where'd you hear that? Oh, yeah, I forgot—you're related to Jesse Crane.”

“Second cousins or something like that,” Dane agreed.

“He tell you that?”

“No.”

“Good, because it's not supposed to get out.”

“So you're not going to tell me?”

“No,” Hector said, but he pulled a pen from his breast pocket and started writing on the paper place mat beneath his plate. “But I will give you this. The names of both clubs—I'm pretty sure that both of these girls were targeted when they were working—and a few of the names of the girls we interviewed at each. Who knows? Maybe you'll get something we haven't been able to come up with. Sometimes these girls can spot a cop a mile away, and they're not always so willing to talk to the cops, even when their own lives might be in danger. And if you get anything, anything at all, you come to me with it, you hear?”