TURTLE DOVE

An Alton Rhode Mystery

By

LAWRENCE DE MARIA

Turtle Dove, a novel by Lawrence De Maria

Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2015

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, email ljdemaria@aol.com.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by St. Austin’s Press

Special thanks to Nancy Kreisler, Maryellen Alvarez and Deborah Thompson.

Dedicated to my wife, Patricia, without whose love, support and faith this book

– and others –

would not have been possible,

and to my sons,

Lawrence and Christopher.

Good men, both.

TURTLE DOVE

“Mourning Doves are small, graceful birds, common across the continent. The doves form strong pair bonds to raise their young. They have always been heavily hunted, and now developers are savaging their breeding grounds, plowing under nests filled with eggs and young chicks. In North Carolina, where they are also called Turtle Doves, the soft, drawn-out calls of surviving parents for their buried young sound like laments.”

— Ashleigh Harper, from To Bury a Turtle Dove

PROLOGUE

The old woman was so very tired. She felt as if she could close her eyes and sleep forever. Which she knew was a distinct possibility when one is 88 with a weak heart.

Not that she feared death. Her long life had been one of accomplishment and honors. While she cared little for the honors, she liked the thought that her signature book was now a staple in classrooms around the country. My God, has it been 47 years since it was published! Or was it 48? She could not remember.

It was hard remembering such things at her age. The pills certainly did not help. But they did make her more comfortable, if a bit addled. Her arthritis and various other pains were now bearable. Her eyesight was strong, thanks to cataract surgery that gave her better vision than she had when she was in her 60’s! She had books and cable TV for the BBC crime dramas she loved, and she still enjoyed her food, especially the variety of fresh seafood available, although she ate sparingly.

She stirred in her rocking chair and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean from the deck of her third-floor bedroom. She certainly could stay awake long enough to watch the night arrive. Not the sunset, which would be in the West, on the opposite side of the island. The woman did not give a fig about sunsets. They could be beautiful, of course, and she had seen spectacular sunsets on the West coast of Florida and in the Florida Keys, where she traveled when much younger. But here, on Bald Head Island, just off the coast of North Carolina, the sun set over land. No shimmering golden glow against the clouds, no “green flash” as the sun disappeared (which she had once actually spotted even though some people claimed it was an old wives’ tale), no boozy spectators “hissing” as the sun appeared to drop into the Gulf of Mexico. In her house facing the beach, she loved sunrises, and next to them, watching the Atlantic glimmer, first with fading sunlight and, at the right time of the month, with the moon’s reflection as it rose into the night sky.

She was a familiar sight to beachgoers and passing boaters, as she sat on her deck. It was mid-October, and the air, while unseasonably warm for this time of year, was still brisk, so there were few people on the beach and only an occasional passing boat. She always waved at the boaters, and if they noticed, they invariably waved back. She wondered if any of them knew who she was. She doubted it. She had done everything she could to avoid becoming a tourist attraction, God forbid. Soon, there would not be anyone to wave to her. The tourist season had been over for weeks and the first real cold front would drive the stragglers away, leaving only the island’s few permanent residents, many of them commercial fishermen.

A large sport fishing boat came into her view, very close to shore. The captain must be a good sailor, she thought, since the shoals and sandbars along this stretch of coast could be challenging. But there was little breeze and the sea was comparatively docile. The boat stopped and dropped anchor. Curious. It was late for day fishing and early for night fishing. A man threw a raft over the side and was soon paddling into shore. That was even stranger. The old woman had watched boats for many years and had never once seen someone do that. The man beached the raft and dragged it a few dozen yards onto the sand. Then he walked toward the house.

The old woman heard the sliding door behind her open, and then a familiar voice.

“Time for your meds, honey.”

“So soon, Sandy? It seems like I just took some.”

“These are a new prescription.”

“What are they for?”

“They will help you sleep.”

“I already have sleeping pills.”

“These are a new prescription.”

“Why are there so many?”

“Doctor’s orders. Now be a good girl. Here, I’ll help you. You can take them one at a time. That’s good, honey. Now another one. There we go. Just a few more.”

She disliked taking pills. Some of her medications were so large that she called them “horse pills” and joked that she was thinking of entering the Kentucky Derby. But Sandy knew what was good for her. She had been the old woman’s right arm for several years, ministering to her failing health and keeping her isolated from journalists and even the merely curious who wanted to talk to the famous writer, who valued her privacy above all else. The woman knew about the rumors that she was senile, or worse. On a good day she had most, if not all, of her faculties. But being thought of as mentally challenged had its advantages for someone who wanted to be left alone.

She had been angry at Sandy only once, when her caretaker and friend suggested a meeting with a New York publisher who wanted the woman’s other manuscripts.

“What other manuscripts?” she had asked.

“The ones I found in those trunks you have in storage.”

“Oh, my goodness, Sandy. I wrote that drivel when I was barely out of college. I did not even have any experiences to talk of. Just childish jottings. I thought I burned them. Throw them out.”

“But they may be valuable. At least the publisher thinks so.”

The old woman was stunned.

“You’ve already approached a publisher about them! You had no right, Sandy. What were you thinking? They just want to trade on my name. Those infantile scribbles will make me look like a fool. They will cheapen the one book I want to be remembered for. I won’t have it, I tell you. I won’t have it. I want them destroyed. I will even put it in my will. Nothing I wrote before Turtle Dove must ever see the light of day!”

Sandy apologized, and that was that. Since then, she had been even more solicitous, as if to make up for her mistake. But that was all in the past.

Now, after the old woman managed to down all the pills, she said, “Sandy, are we expecting someone?”

“Why do you ask?”

“A man just came ashore and was walking toward the house.”

“Well, he must have used the beach access path to cut through to the road. I didn’t see anyone. Here, let me help you get dressed for bed.”

The old woman suddenly felt very sleepy. She could hardly keep her eyes open. She did not object.

***

The woman did not know why she woke up. It was dark, but moonlight streamed through the windows. There was someone in the room. She was suddenly frightened. But why?

“Sandy, is that you?”

A hand switched on her bedside lamp. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and then she had quite a start. Another woman, also elderly, was standing by the side of her bed, staring at her. It was like looking in a mirror, except the woman’s eyes were brown.

“Who are you?”

Suddenly, Sandy appeared next to the other woman, and pulled her away, shouting “Bessie, what the hell are you doing in here?”

“I just wanted to see her in person. I want to get everything right. Her eyes are blue.”

“Yes, we know. We already have the contact lenses for you.”

“And her skin is darker.”

“A few days sitting in the sun will take care of that. And maybe a little body makeup. Now get out of here and stay on your side of the house until we come for you.”

“All right. All right. You needn’t be so pushy. I had to hear her speak, didn’t I?”

“Do you think there will be a problem with that?”

“No, no. I’m no Meryl Streep, sweetheart, but I’ll get by. I heard enough.”

“Good. Now go to your room.”

“Sure, sure. But I’m sick and tired of being cooped up out of sight. When does she go in that nursing home?”

“A few days. Now, get out of here.”

The woman in bed heard the door shut. She was confused. Who were they talking about?

“Sandy, what is going on? Who was that? Who is Bessie?”

There was no answer and for a moment she thought she was dreaming. Then, another unfamiliar face swam into her vision. It was a man’s face. A cruel face.

“Jesus Christ,” the man snarled. “You said she’d be sleeping!”

Finally, a face she knew loomed above her. Sandy. And she was smiling. The old woman smiled back. It was all right.

“I must have screwed up the dose,” Sandy said.

“That’s fucking great,” the man said. “Now what? They saw each other. Bessie is a pain in the ass. What did she want to hear her voice for? This one here hasn’t spoken in public for years.”

The old woman was shocked at the man’s vulgarity. Who was he, and what were they talking about?

“What difference does it make?” Sandy said. “And who knows? It might be for the best. I never thought about the voice. It doesn’t change anything. You know what you have to do.”

“I’d rather do it when she was asleep,” the man grumbled.

“Just get on with it, for Christ’s sake.”

A hand roughly lifted the old woman’s head and she felt her pillow being removed. The movement was so sudden that she cried out as pain shot through her weak neck muscles.

“No,” she said as her head flopped back on the mattress. “I need my pillow.”

“Coming right up, lady,” the man said.

The pillow came back into view. She was sorry she’d complained. They were probably just fluffing it for her. The man was certainly crude, however. No bedside manners at all. And he smelled of fish. I will tell Sandy to replace him.

The pillow seemed to be coming closer. Then it was pressed firmly against her face. She tried to breathe. She couldn’t. The pressure increased. She did not understand. Her lungs started to burn. Panic pierced her drug-addled brain. For the first time in ages, she felt the beat of her feeble heart. It was pounding. There was a roar in her ears. Her hands flew up to grab the pillow and encountered the arms holding it relentlessly against her mouth and nose. The arms were strong and hairy. She vomited, which only increased her agony, since her mouth and nose were blocked.

Then, mercifully, her heart, starved of oxygen and unused to such exertion, began beating erratically and plunged into a terminal arrhythmia. She lost consciousness, and was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

But the man who murdered her did not let up the pressure for another five minutes.

“That’s enough,” the woman called Sandy said. “Jesus, that’s enough.”

“You said she’d be out like a light,” the man said, breathing heavily. It was hard work holding down the pillow. “I want to be sure. This old biddy is tough.”

He lifted the pillow. The woman’s sightless eyes stared up at him. A greenish-yellow fluid dripped from her mouth.

“Christ, it stinks in here,” he said. “She must have crapped, too.”

“Never mind that. Strip her and then wrap her in the bed sheet with the pillow. I’ll clean up here. Will you need my help getting her to your boat?”

The killer’s 31-foot Bertram rolled gently at anchor 150 feet off the beach behind the house. The craft, no longer in production but still considered one of the finest fishing boats ever made, was his pride and joy. It had cost him a small fortune, which was one reason he got himself involved in this crazy plan. The other reason was standing at the end of the bed giving him orders. He’d never had a woman like her, and suspected he never would. Their relationship was a well-kept secret. He wished it wasn’t. He wanted to climb to the top of “Old Baldy”, the island’s historic lighthouse, and shout that he was sleeping with a woman other men could only dream about, especially the harbor rats he hung out with at the bar at Mojo’s. Someday, if all went well, he would.

“No. I’ve already figured that out.”

He wrapped the corpse and everything else in the bed sheet and carried it out to the deck.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“She don’t weigh much,” the man said, “but I don’t want to carry her down three flights of stairs.”

With that, he unceremoniously dropped his burden off the deck, where it landed with a thud in the sand far below.

“Jesus Christ, Len!”

“What? She don’t care.”

He went downstairs and out the back door. He picked up the body. She really was light. Just skin and bones. The small rubber skiff that he’d used to come ashore lay in the sand at the high-tide mark. He put the body in the skiff and dragged it into the surf, hopped in and picked up a paddle. The water was calm, which is why they chose this particular evening.

***

Leonard Vole slowed his fishing boat, She Got the House, approximately three miles from Bald Head Island. Originally named the Peggy Sue after his third wife, the new name aptly reflected Vole’s reduced circumstances. He changed it immediately after his divorce from the bitch, who somehow was awarded most of his assets — even though she was the one caught screwing their minister in Vole’s pickup. She got the damn pickup, too! Before meeting Sandy, he alternated sleeping on the boat and in a rented room in Southport. He still had the room, but now also spent much of his time in Sandy’s bed. He had not replaced his vehicle. He could walk to the ferry terminal in Southport, and everything he needed for his fishing charter business was available on Bald Head, which except for a few maintenance, fire and police vehicles, did not allow cars. All other land transportation on the miniscule island is limited to modified “golf” carts, small trams, bicycles or foot.

Vole looked at the bundled corpse on his deck. He’d originally planned on wrapping it in heavy chains and additionally weighing it down by barbells, but decided not to take any chances. On board he had the tools needed to clean the largest marlins and sharks, and now he took them out of a locker. Then he unwrapped the sheet around the woman. An hour later, using his biggest hooks, he weighted down the individual pieces with the heaviest sinkers in his tackle box. As the boat made steady progress on autopilot, Vole calmly dropped his horrible cargo at approximately quarter-mile intervals. A former Navy Seal who was separated from the service for mental instability, he did not find the whole grisly process all that disturbing. He’d seen worse.

Each chunk sank out of sight, but not before attracting the attention of some sharks, lured by the blood in the water. From the look of them they appeared to be spinners or blacktips. Even such an experienced fisherman as Vole sometimes had trouble telling the close shark cousins apart at a distance. Vole knew this stretch of the Atlantic as well as anyone in North Carolina, and had specifically chosen the location, where the water was not only deep but also far from any of the underwater wrecks favored by his fellow fishermen. In the distance he could see the running lights of freighters plying the coast of North Carolina, but there were no other boats, large or small, within miles. The chance that the body parts would ever be discovered before decomposition and seas scavengers obliterated all traces of them was nil. And even if any bits remained, they would be swept far away by the Gulf Stream. Certainly, nothing would wash up on shore anywhere near where the killing took place.

The Bald Head Island marina was in an inlet on the western shore of the island. Vole headed back, shredding and scattering the woman’s clothes, pillow and bedsheets in the water as he went. Then he started washing down the deck and stern, which looked like an abattoir. He noticed that it had gotten darker. The moon, which had been shining brightly, was now covered by clouds. Vole went into his cabin and turned on his weather radar. There was a squall just to his north. He headed for it and soon She Got the House was engulfed in a driving rain. It was a rough ride, with water sloshing over the gunwales fore and aft, but Vole loved it. He was too good a seaman to be worried about a passing squall, and the rain and seawater was cleaning the boat even better than he could!

It took him almost an hour to reach his berth. After tying up his boat and checking for anything incriminating, Vole climbed into one of the golf carts owned by the woman he had recently dismembered and headed back to her house.

Just under 15 minutes later, he stripped off his sodden clothes in the room he was using, threw them in the washer and took a shower. Then, wearing only a towel, he padded into his lover’s room. She was already lying in bed, naked. The woman knew his blood was up, and he wanted his reward. He dropped the towel. She laughed and reached out and grabbed him by his already erect member.

“Any problems?” she asked, drawing him onto the bed.

“No.” Leonard Vole’s voice was husky with lust. “She’s sleeping with Bin Laden.”

It was a good line, and the woman laughed. A moment later they were thrashing in bed, not knowing, or caring, that they had just committed only the second murder in Bald Head Island’s history.

The first had occurred almost 500 years earlier, in 1526, when a Spanish sailor washed ashore after the ship captained by the Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón ran into the treacherous shoals surrounding the island and sank. The sailor, whose name was lost to history, was found, sprawled barely conscious in the sand, by some of the Native Americans who frequented Bald Head’s shores and estuaries to collect the abundance of shellfish available.

Unfortunately for the sailor, the savages who revived him were sick of eating clams and shrimp, and decided to augment their diet.

They killed him, and ate the evidence.

CHAPTER 1 - DESTINATION WEDDING

Five Months Later

Somewhere In North Carolina

I wondered if there was a law against shooting your GPS system and putting it out of its misery.

I didn’t think that was likely, but I was in North Carolina, so who knew? There are lots of strange laws south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

It was Thursday afternoon, and over the past half hour “Gladys”, which is what I call my portable GPS unit, had bombarded me with an endless stream  of “when possible, make a legal U-turn” and “re-calculating route” invectives as I meandered through the maze that is coastal North Carolina near its border with South Carolina. Gladys was confused by the new highways that had apparently replaced older rural roads.  The trouble started on I-95 when she told me to get off at Exit 14.

There was no Exit 14.

There was an Exit 13 A and an Exit 13 B, but by the time I realized I should have taken one of them, I passed both and was on my way to Savannah.

Savannah is one of my favorite cities, and there was no traffic, but I was trying to get to Southport, NC, where I hoped to catch a ferry to Bald Head Island. I was scheduled to give away the bride at a “destination wedding” on Bald Head.

Hard to do when you can’t find the blasted destination.

Bald Head Island was one of those places where the choice between flying and driving was not so simple. The nearest major airport that serves the area apparently has not been built yet. Raleigh, Charlotte and Fayetteville were still hours away by auto on roads that, as I discovered, could confuse satellites. To endure the inevitable airport delays, first in New York, and then at one of those airports, only to face a four-hour drive, was not appealing. I estimated that I could drive the whole way in approximately the same time. I also suspected that had a modern-day Sherman been forced to plunder the South by air, the Confederacy would have a chance. Someone probably would lose his luggage.

I broke up my trip by stopping in Washington, D.C., for a long-overdue visit with Dave Stewart, a pal from high school with whom I’ve kept in touch. Dave is a white-shoe D.C. lawyer who writes historical non-fiction books on the side. It’s a pretty good side. An acknowledged expert on early American presidents, Dave has hit The New York Times bestseller list twice. I spent an enjoyable and enlightening day and night with Dave and his equally talented wife Nancy, a city commissioner in nearby Alexandria, before resuming my journey to Bald Head. But I was happy to leave Washington. Late August can be brutal in D.C., and it was. In the nation’s early history, European diplomats considered a posting to the American capital, with its sub-tropical and malarial summers, a hardship post. Air-conditioning made inside better, but outside was another matter altogether.

My troubles with Gladys aside, long-distance driving did not bother me. I liked to drive and finally had the car for it, after a succession of vehicles that were at best adequate and, at worst, unlucky. When I got back years ago from my hopefully last tour of duty in Sandland — I say hopefully because I don’t think Uncle Sam needs a shot-up veteran when there are so many un-shot studs around, many of them running for elective office and trying to start more wars — I was financially challenged. My private investigation business, never all that healthy to begin with, had withered even further. A friend, Al Lambert, who was both a used-car dealer and one of Staten Island’s premier entertainers, somehow managed to find some cars I could afford.

The first was a rental-fleet Chevy Malibu whose car carrier had been caught in a vicious Indiana hail storm. The other cars on the carrier looked like golf balls, but the only-slightly-damaged vehicle Al sold me at a steep discount performed yeoman’s service for years. After that, I upgraded to a Fusion hybrid until my penchant for taking on cases that cost me more money than I made forced me back to Al, who put me in a four-year-old Hyundai Santa Fe SUV that I adored — until somebody blasted it with a shotgun during my last big case and killed an innocent kid who had borrowed it. The SUV was totaled in the subsequent crash, but even if it hadn’t been I would have gotten rid of it after that.

I made a lot of money on that last case, thanks to the woman whose wedding I was about to be a part of, so now I was tooling around in a three-year-old Acura that, because of Al, cost me a lot less than it should have. It is a fast, comfortable and handsome vehicle with a lot of bells and whistles that I have not tried out yet, and should keep me happy for years, unless someone shoots it up or I take on more pro bono cases.

There was nothing going on in my office, not an unusual occurrence, unfortunately, so I’d decided to take some time off. I’m not a big fan of weddings, destination or otherwise, but Bald Head Island supposedly had good fishing and a world-class golf course. I’m not a fanatic about golf and hate lugging clubs through an airport, but throwing them in the trunk of my car was no problem. I told my office manager, Abby, to hold down the fort.

Then, I had to figure out what to do with Scar and Gunner.

Scar is not much of a problem. He is the almost feral feline that roams St. Austin’s Place, the block where I live in West Brighton. I gave Scar his name when he first arrived in my backyard, which is his base of operations and private kill zone. I don’t have a rodent problem, but there is a trade-off. My property is not a place a bird watcher would find rewarding. One look at Scar’s face and skull are enough to explain his name. He is bigger than most tom cats I’ve seen, and if he could talk he’d probably say, “You should see the other cat”. Or dog, or raccoon, or mountain lion, for all I know. His meow sounds like a sink garbage disposal and his purr, when he deigns to purr, mimics a lawn mower.

For all that, I cherish Scar, although the fact that he seems to prefer me over my neighbors is probably something my psychiatrist would have a field day with, if I had a psychiatrist. My pal, Wayne Miller, used to stop by and feed and water Scar when I was away for any length of time. For short jaunts, there was no problem, in any season. Scar would grub off the neighbors or make do with local puddles and unwary birds and squirrels. Wayne, an actor and director now working off-Broadway, has begged off of late. I now use Freddie Schultz, one of my neighbor’s kids and the first person everyone on the block would blame in case of vandalism or teen-age mayhem. Needless to say, he gets along great with Scar. Birds of a feather, and all that.

Gunner, my dog, is more of a problem. I took him along on my last sojourn south, and got him shot. It didn’t seem to bother him all that much, but my last-minute rental house on Bald Head specified “no pets”. I could have opted for a pet-friendly mansion at three times the cost, but since my trip was meant to combine my wedding duties with a romantic getaway, I decided to leave Gunner home. Freddie was an option. Both he, and Scar, get along famously with Gunner. But fate intervened when I mentioned my quandary to Maks Kalugin.

“I’ll take him,” Maks said. “Zhukov will enjoy the company.”

Zhukov is Gunner’s brother. He is named after the famous Red Army Marshall who was Stalin’s favorite general, the conqueror of Berlin. Gunner is named after John “Gunner” Panetta, a Medal of Honor winner from Vietnam, whose murder I solved a while back. Both dogs are Byelorussian Ovcharkas, a breed that is a mix of East Siberian Laikas and German Shepherds. “Charkas” are known for their toughness, loyalty and superior intelligence, which came in handy when serving with the Red Army on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Gunner was a gift to me from Marat Rahm, the patriarch of the Russian family that is the most powerful of the Staten Island mobs, and one of the most powerful in New York City. My relationship with the Rahms is complicated. I’ve known Arman Rahm, Marat’s son, since we played basketball together as teen-agers. He now runs the family with a cold shrewdness that belies his movie-star looks. Maks Kalugin is the family enforcer. He doesn’t look like a movie star. He looks like a fire plug, but tougher. At one time, all three considered having me sleep with the sturgeons and only kept me alive because Marat’s daughter, Eleni, intervened. Since then, we have traded favors when necessary and they’ve always kept their word. Maks has even saved my life occasionally, at first reluctantly, but lately because he is very fond of Alice Watts, the woman I love. She thinks he is adorable, which puts her in a majority of one. I doubt if Kalugin’s mother thought he was adorable.

When I dropped Gunner off at the gabled-and-turreted Rahm mansion on Todt Hill, Marat Rahm insisted I join him for a drink out by his pool, where he was taking the sun. Arman was at a table working on a laptop. He smiled at me and pointed to the computer screen.

“Facebook,” he said. “You can’t believe what people put on here. I’ve actually found some idiots I was looking for because they really think someone is interested in what they are cooking or how cute their grandchildren are.”

“I don’t want to hear what happened to them,” I said.

Arman gave me a frosty smile.

“No, you don’t.”

Gunner and Zhukov began to frolic on the huge lawn. Frolic was a relative term; both were now large enough to pull a sled in a Russian proverb. Maks poured our vodkas and Marat asked what I was up to. I told them. When I finished, even Kalugin laughed.

“You are giving away in marriage the woman we used to entrap you in the Capriati matter,” Marat said. “Are you sure you don’t have a Russian in your woodpile, Alton? Tolstoi or Pasternak couldn’t make any of this up. The woman almost got you killed.”

“On your orders,” I pointed out.

“Only fools hold grudges,” Marat said. “I’m glad to see you don’t. So, now she is rich. Maks told me what happened in Virginia. About her father. I must say, you are doing your part in ridding the world of scum.”

“Maks helped out quite a bit. I think he got mad when they shot Gunner.”

“It is never wise to make Maks angry.”

I smiled at the memory, as I now finally located the right road, the Andrew Jackson Highway. I bet that most people think Old Hickory was a native Tennessean. Thanks to Dave Stewart, who knows more about Jackson than Jackson, I happen to know Andy was probably born in North Carolina. Whoever claims him, I hope he stays on the $20 bill.

Gladys somehow managed to get me off at the right exit toward Southport, but then had a real nervous breakdown, at one point directing me towards Bolivia, which thankfully turned out to be a small town, not the country. Then, she sent me down one road that dead-ended at an abandoned building that looked like it once hosted a Ku Klux Klan meeting.

It wasn’t Gladys’s fault, of course. I could have followed directions and maps on my iPhone, or used the Acura’s built-in GPS system, but I was used to her. However, after one of her legal U-turns on “Green Swamp Road” put me in the path of a minivan driven by a woman texting on her cell phone with dog on her lap, I pulled her plug and stopped at a gas station to find out where the hell I was. The kid behind the counter at the attached convenience store had a bad case of acne but a good sense of direction. In celebration, I bought a cup of coffee and an apple fritter, and was in Southport 15 minutes later. The town was full of signs to the ferry landing and I made it just in time to miss the 3 PM boat to Bald Head.

CHAPTER 2 - MOJO’S

I called Alice on Bald Head, who was to pick me up from the ferry, to tell her I’d be late.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “The ferry runs every hour from the mainland. How was your drive?”

“If I give you the details, I’ll miss the next boat.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

I dropped my suitcase and golf clubs with an attendant who threw them onto one of those rolling carts one sees at airports. I asked him for a bag check ticket and was informed that I did not need one. Everything was on the honor system; everyone’s bags would be waiting for them on the island when they got off the ferry.

“Nobody steals anything on Bald Head,” he said. “In fact, there is no crime at all.”

I doubted that, but it did sound like I would enjoy Bald Head.

A local cabbie directed me to a parking lot and I walked back to the terminal and bought a round-trip ticket on the Adventure, the ferry operating that day. The Deep Point Marina terminal had a large upstairs waiting room overlooking the harbor. It also had a small cafe that served wine and beer. With a half hour to kill before the next boarding, I bought a bottle of a local craft brew called Absalom’s Ale and grabbed a copy of “Haven”, a slick touristy magazine devoted to extolling the history and beauty of Bald Head Island.

In the section devoted to ferry service, I learned that my ferry, the Adventure, was named after a Spanish sloop that was captured by Blackbeard off Honduras in 1717 and was involved in a battle off the North Carolina coast in which the dreaded pirate was killed. I was not sure if a sloop was bigger than a frigate, but I could guess that Blackbeard’s last words might have been a variation on “we need a bigger boat.”

When I finally boarded my ferry, I was surprised how crowded it was for a weekday. I mentioned that to a passing crewman. He explained that most schools in the South ended their summer vacations in mid-August, and after a short lull there was a surge in visitors as Bald Head filled up with people going to weddings, as I was.

“I also work part-time at the Shoals Club,” he said, “and I think we have something like 20 weddings booked through October.”

The Adventure was fast and modern, with a comfortable seating lounge. The ride across to the island took only 20 minutes. Many of the passengers went outside to “ooh” and “aah”, but I buried my head in the guidebook. I came from Staten Island. Ferries, about 10 times larger than the one I was now in, are old hat.

I did go outside when we pulled up to the dock, and was standing next to two young men. One of them punched the other on the arm.

“Look at that,” he said. “I hope she’ll be at the wedding. She’s hot. I would swim across for a shot at her.”

“What wedding are you fellows going to,” I casually asked the man who spoke, following their gaze to a beautiful, long-legged woman wearing a mint-colored sleeveless sundress.

“Friend of ours from Wall Street. Barry Lewinsohn. How about you?”

“Yeah. Me, too. With that hottie you are looking at.”

Alice Watts saw me and waved.

“Oh, shit man, I’m sorry,” the guy said.

“Don’t be. Truth is a defense.”

If there is anything better than walking down a ramp from a boat into the arms of a beautiful woman — other than the promise of what is to come later — I can’t imagine what it could be.

After a long, lingering kiss, I said, “I feel like a sailor on VJ Day.”

“Looking for a good time, swabbie?” Alice said.

“No, just happy to have someone like you waiting for me.”

“What a lovely thing to say.”

“Of course, I’m not ruling out a good time.”

She kissed me again.

“You bet your bippy, sailor.”

All around us people were meeting and greeting, while “golf” carts and trams pulled up. My luggage was where they said it would be and after I collected it we walked over to our cart, which like most of the others I spotted dockside could accommodate at least six passengers.

“Want a quick tour?”

“Sure,” I said, knowing that with Alice behind the wheel, even of a golf cart, we would be at maximum speed momentarily.

I had to admit that the marina area was charming, with restaurants and quaint little shops surrounding the harbor. We stopped at a place called Mojo’s On The Harbor and had a couple of “Mojo’s Mojitos” at an outside table. They were quite good. I looked at some of the other drinks people were being served. They all seemed to have cucumbers in them.

I looked at Alice.

“Cucumbers?”

“Yes, I know. It seems to be the ‘in’ thing. I tried a cucumber martini the other night.”

“What did it taste like?”

“Cucumber.”

“Enough said.”

“Other than some strange drinking habits, I love this island,” Alice said. “Especially now that I have the lay of the land.”

“I know. I just got off the boat.”

“Oink. Just for that remark, I want another mojito.”

“Hey, you’re driving, lady.”

After leaving Mojo’s, we drove along the shore, past large houses, some of which were on stilts. I could see, and hear, waves breaking on the beach perhaps a hundred yards away.

“Stilts or no stilts,” I said, “a hurricane Sandy comes through here, those houses are toast.”

Most of the land we initially drove through consisted of scrub brush and sand dunes.

“How are the bugs?”

“Not too bad,” Alice said. “My first day here there was very little wind and the gnats were bad. At least I think they were gnats. I got some nasty bites on my ankles walking to the beach.”

“No-see-ums.”

“What?’

“They are sand flies, called ‘no-see-ums’ down here. Bloodsuckers. So tiny they are hardly visible, but they bite and itch like crazy. I remember them well from the Army. Drove us nuts in Afghanistan. Some of my men hated them worse than the Taliban.”

“Well, whatever they are, they haven’t been a bother since. I guess because it’s been pretty windy. And I haven’t seen any mosquitoes. They must spray.”

“I looked at a map of the island on my way over on the ferry,” I said. “It looks like most of the middle of the island is either marshland or forested.”

“I’ve seen the marshes at a distance, but when we drive through the island there are lots of trees. They make canopies over the cart paths and are very lush. It reminds me of Jurassic Park. I half expect a Velociraptor to jump out. Oh, here’s the golf course. That’s where the condo is.”

Alice turned off the road and stopped at a gatehouse, where a lady with a clipboard smiled at her and waved her through.

“Her name is Francine,” Alice said. “You are supposed to show a guest pass, but she knows me now. I brought her a coffee and bagel one morning.”

“Isn’t that how you got me?”

“No, you were a cheeseburger.”

“That reminds me. What are we doing for dinner?”

“I bought plenty of provisions at the market. It’s quite a place. Reminds me of Gristedes in Manhattan. They have everything. But we are having dinner out tonight with Laurene and Barry.”

“Where?”

“The Shoals Club, the country club overlooking West Beach. It’s where the wedding will be. Membership comes with the condo rental. We also have temporary membership in the yacht club and the Bald Head Island Golf Club.”

From what I could see it was a good-looking golf course, much greener and hillier than I would have expected.

“Here we are,” Alice said as she pulled into a small garage under a modern-looking, two-story attached condo.

I got out and she plugged the cart into a charger on the wall. I noticed two bikes hanging on a wall. Then we went inside, through the garage.

“Drop your bag,” Alice directed, pointing to the bottom of a small stairway. “The bedrooms are all downstairs.”

She went up to the second floor. There was a large modern kitchen and a great room that had a view of the distant ocean. A large L-shaped couch faced sliding doors that led to a wraparound porch. Alice went to the door and looked out.

“Not the greatest view in the world,” she said. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”

I came up behind her and ran my hands up the front of her shirt and cupped her breasts.

“What view?”

“We have a reservation,” she said.

“What time?”

Her nipples hardened as I tweaked them and kissed her neck.

“Eight o’clock.”

“We have time to spare,” I said.

I noticed that my voice was a bit hoarse.

She turned around and pushed me down on the couch. She took off her shirt and dropped both her shorts and underwear. I looked up at her.

“Then we’d better get busy,” she said, straddling me. Her voice was hoarse, too. “Those damn mojitos.”

CHAPTER 3 - BRIDE AND GROOM

I was on the deck looking out at the ocean in the fading light waiting for Alice to finish dressing. She always takes twice as long to get ready as I do, but is always worth the wait. I was wearing a tan tropic-weight L.L. Bean travel blazer, khaki pants, and a yellow golf shirt and feeling pretty spiffy. Hopefully, my tuxedo would arrive with the wedding party, which was flying down on a corporate jet to a private airfield in Wilmington, North Carolina, later in the week. That airport was only about a 20-minute drive to Southport and the ferry to Bald Head. I had been offered a spot on the jet, but declined. Nuptials are a struggle for me, and the thought of being locked up in a plane and then some cars or vans with wedding revelers held no appeal. Besides, I wanted to stop off in Washington, D.C., and then have a leisurely vacation with Alice.

I heard the slider open behind me.

“Hubba, hubba,” I said when I turned. Alice was wearing a blue lace sheath dress and silver open-toed high-heel sandals. There was a single strand of pearls around her neck to go with her pearl earrings.  “I take that back. Hubba, hubba, hubba.”

“That’s better,” she said, twirling around. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”

We went down to the garage and I backed the golf cart out.

“I feel ridiculous driving a beautiful woman anywhere in a golf cart,” I said as Alice got in on the passenger side. “You are dressed for a limo.”

“One must make do,” she said. “Besides, this is a classy golf cart.”

I drove out of the golf club and Alice told me to take a left.

“The Shoals Club is on the other side of the island. But we can take a short cut inland.”

A few minutes later we were traveling along a narrow path through a dark, forbidding forest. There were a lot of strange animal noises

“Pretty spooky, isn’t it?”

“I’m beginning to regret leaving my gun back at the condo,” I said.

A few minutes later we came to the end of the road, which split in two at right angles just before some sand dunes. A sign with an arrow pointing to the right said “Shoals Club”. Alice pointed down the road to the left.

“Alt, do you see that old house, the one all by itself at the end?”

It was a large, three-story structure that fronted the Atlantic Ocean. It was getting dark, but even from a distance I could tell it was weatherbeaten.

“What about it?”

“Ashleigh Harper lives there.”

I momentarily drew a blank.

“She wrote To Bury a Turtle Dove,” Alice prompted. “She’s been in all the papers lately.”

“Oh, yes, she just published a sequel, didn’t she? After 40 years, or something.”

“Yes. I just bought it. The Lighthouse Chronicles.”

“Is it any good?”

“Haven’t started it yet. Reviews are mixed. But I’ll withhold judgment. Probably anything would pale in comparison to her first book, which was a masterpiece. Almost required reading for kids in high school, because of its environmental theme. I bet I’m not the only one who cried at the scene where the developers destroy those nests.”

“I remember. It was a combination Silent Spring and Bambi.”

“You read Turtle Dove?”

“Saw the movie, too. But I didn’t cry.”

“How old were you?”

“I don’t know. I was in grammar school.”

“You cried.”

I laughed.

“Well, I may have sniffled a bit when the developers plowed over the nests with the new chicks in them. But I thought Harper was a recluse now.”

“Probably no more than the other permanent residents on Bald Head,” Alice said. “All 200 of them.”

“That’s all?”

“I read that in the Chamber of Commerce brochure. The island is pretty deserted much of the year. Harper was born in a small town in western North Carolina, but moved here after she became famous. She’s just a very private person, I guess. There were all sorts of rumors that she was an invalid, senile and the like, but apparently her publisher has insisted that she come out of her shell a bit, to prove she’s got all her faculties.”

“Yeah. It’s hard to promote a book if the author has turned into a root vegetable.”

Alice gave me a look.

“Anyway,” she said, “there is even a small reception for her the day after the wedding at the Shoals Club. There is a notice in the lobby.”

“Are you planning on going?”

“We can’t. It’s invitation-only.”

That made me happy, since the “we” meant I would have had to sit through a book lecture from someone older than a Galapagos turtle.

“What a shame.”

Alice gave me another one of her looks. Sometimes I think I say things just to get one of them. She looks so cute doing them.

“It’s just that I’d love to see her,” she said, with a sigh. “I have an old copy of To Bury a Turtle Dove at home. I picked it up at the Strand, second hand, years ago. I’ve read it so many times, it’s falling apart.”

The Strand was the bookstore in Greenwich Village famous for its collection of old books, many of which now reside in my bookshelves at home. I love the place, too. Alice’s apartment is not far from it and we invariably wind up there at some point when I stay over.

I unbent. Alice really wanted to meet Ashleigh Harper.

“Maybe I could shoot our way in,” I suggested.

“Save that thought.”

Alice traversed the interior of Bald Head Island, with its twists and turns and now barely visible road signs like she was born there. I was impressed, and said so.

“I was often lost my first day,” she said, “but once you realize all the roads basically lead to one end of the island or the other, it’s a snap, even at night. I’ve been here almost four days now.”

Alice had spent much of the summer teaching philosophy at Duke University in Durham. We’d met at Wagner College, where she taught and coached the swim team. I’ve grown to admire her mind, but I have to admit I first admired how her body looked in a swim suit when I spotted her at the Wagner pool. She was surrounded by nubile and lithe co-ed swimmers in skin-tight racing suits, and still stood out. Our relationship has since deepened, but her body, in and out of a bathing suit, still takes my breath away. Duke was one of several top schools that have tried to steal her away from Wagner, and I’ve been a nervous wreck thinking she might move far away. So, when I found out that she had settled on Barnard College in Manhattan, I rewarded both of us with a week on Bald Head Island. She had taken a bus from Durham to Bald Head on Sunday, a trip that she described in such excruciating detail I kept my own GPS troubles to myself.

The Shoals Club sat on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic. It was still light enough for some beachgoers and swimmers, and a couple of kite surfers weaved in and out of the waves. There was a stiff breeze and occasionally one of them bounced high into the air. It looked like fun.

I parked our cart in one of several small lots near the club and started to take the key out.

“Leave it,” Alice said. “Everyone does.”

I glanced at nearby carts. All had their keys in them. Most of the carts had names, either of their owners or presumably of the house they were garaged at, displayed on their front or rear bumpers. Many of them were decked out with ornaments, rear-view mirrors and decals from various sports teams. I looked back at our cart, which had no displays of any kind. Alice was right. It was classy. On the way into the club we passed a large pool adjacent to an outdoor cafe and bar. I spotted lighted tennis, badminton and bocce courts, and a horseshoe pitch. All were busy.

The dining room inside faced the ocean and a maître d' led us to a table by the window. Laurene and her soon-to-be husband were already seated. Both rose at our approach. Laurene rushed over to me and gave me a kiss and a hug. I introduced Alice to her.

“Jesus, Alice, you are gorgeous,” Laurene said. “No wonder I couldn’t seduce Alton. Tried like hell.”

Alice laughed.

“Piece of cake,” she said.

Barry looked a bit confused, but was smiling. He knew he was getting a firecracker. And he knew Laurene’s history. Nothing could surprise him.

Laurene introduced him and we sat. I had never met Barry Lewinsohn in person, though we’d spoken on the phone. He was a short, balding, bespectacled fellow who could have afforded to lose a few pounds, but he had a pleasant, intelligent face. He was also very rich and adored Laurene. I knew he had a good heart; he was not only supporting her mother in a nursing home but was so appalled by conditions there that he spent his own money fixing the place up for all its residents. When I found that out, I’d told him he was giving Wall Street a bad name.

We ordered drinks, and the women put their heads together to talk about the wedding.

“I can’t tell you how much it means to Laurene, and me, that you are giving her away,” Barry said. “We don’t have any secrets from each other. I know how you two met.”

I told him how amused the Rahms were about the whole situation.

“You don’t burn any bridges behind you, do you, Alton?”

“No Russian bridges, anyway.”

“I understand one of the Russians came in handy when you helped Laurene out last year.”

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t want to tell Barry just how useful Maks Kalugin had been. It might have ruined his dinner. “Very handy.”

Our drinks came, and then we ordered from a menu that was heavy with local seafood. I suspected that I was in for a week of snapper and grouper, so I opted for a Porterhouse steak, as did Barry. The ladies had fish. Barry insisted on buying some expensive champagne, and who was I to object? Champagne goes with everything and anything. Barry and I talked politics and sports, and found very few things we agreed about on either subject, which made for an enjoyable time. By the time dessert came — Alice and Laurene insisted on trying something called “Warm Pina Colada Bread Pudding” — Barry and I were pretty good friends.

The ladies had apparently exhausted wedding and weekend topics because Laurene turned to Barry.

“Alice tells me that she’d like to get into the reception for Ashleigh Harper on Sunday. You can help her out can’t you?”

“Sure, no problem, honey.”

“I thought it was invitation-only,” Alice said.

“It is,” Barry said. “I’ll get you a couple of invitations.”

“How?” I asked.

“It will just take a phone call,” Barry said. “Godfrey Benedetto, a guy who works for me, does investment banking for Albatross House, Harper’s publisher.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Alice said.

“Be my pleasure. Albatross isn’t in the best financial shape. They were having a hell of a time raising money to keep afloat. Godfrey pulled a rabbit out of a hat for them. They owe him big time.”

“I hear they are making good money with the new Harper book,” I said. “Alice told me they had an initial print run of two million copies.”

“They need a couple more home runs like that before they are out of the woods,” Barry said. “Albatross is like all the old-line publishing houses. Amazon is eating their lunch with ebooks and the Kindle.”

“I have a Kindle,” Alice said. “And I also read ebooks on my iPad. But I still like print books. I’ll buy a copy of Lighthouse at the reception. I hope I can get her to sign it. I only wish I had brought my copy of Turtle Dove. She might have signed that, too.”

“Don’t worry about buying her new book, Alice,” Barry said. “I’ll make sure the people running the reception know who got you the invite. They’ll comp your copies, and there shouldn’t be any trouble about an autograph.”

“That’s not necessary, Barry.”

“Doesn’t matter. They will think it is.”

CHAPTER 4 - HOOKER BRIDESMAIDS

I had hoped to sleep in the next morning, but Alice had other plans. Those plans included something called “cardio-tennis’, which did not sound very promising for someone, like me, who was nursing a mild hangover. Alice had looked her usual chipper self when she bounded into our bedroom decked out in a white tennis outfit and batting a racket against her hand. She was wearing a light-blue bandana around her forehead.

“Let’s go, sleepyhead,” she said.

“I didn’t bring a tennis racket,” I said hopefully.

“I’ve arranged one for you with Jeff. There’s coffee and juice in the kitchen. Please hurry up, we have a 9 AM game. It will be fun. It will get the cobwebs out.”

The next thing I knew I was riding a bike, rather unsteadily, to the tennis facility at the club, where we joined a group of tennis buffs awaiting the lesson. Half of them were bouncing up and down on their feet in anxious anticipation. I did not take that as a hopeful sign.

Jeff turned out to be a tanned tennis instructor of almost limitless enthusiasm, similar to that of the Japanese guards who forced their prisoners to build the Bridge over the River Kwai. He had the group — 20 of us — break down into teams of two. Then, he stood near the net and hit a ball to one team, which then played it across to another until one team won the point. That seemed simple enough. Except that the winning team then was required to sprint, at full speed, to the other side of the court to face a fresh pair. There were soon no fresh pairs, since after about 15 minutes everyone had sprinted around the court at least twice. This went on, nonstop, for a solid hour. Jeff, who barely moved, looked cool and collected. He kept up a steady patter of encouragement, urging us on to faster court changes, and alternating his serves with line drives and drop shots, just to keep us on our toes, or in my case, occasionally flat on my face.

It was hot, and we were soon all soaked with perspiration. I surveyed our little band. I appeared to be the oldest in a group that had several teen-agers, who, though dripping with sweat, were having a swell time. I did not see any senior citizens. I presume they would have to rename the lesson “cardiac-tennis” for that age group.

I’m in pretty good shape. I run, swim and work out regularly at the gym. But after about 10 minutes I was seriously thinking about killing Jeff. The cobwebs had been replaced by spots drifting in my vision, some of which resembled tennis balls.

“What are you swinging at?” Alice said at one point after we were trounced in an early game.

But plenty of water and Gatorade was available and I soon got my legs. Alice and I began winning more than we were losing and by the end of the lesson Jeff praised us as one of the better teams. But I noticed that no one was bouncing up and down on their feet anymore, and I still wanted to find out where he lived so I could kill him later.

Afterward, we went up to a small terrace that had a serving bar and we ordered banana-and-strawberry smoothies. I’m not a fan of smoothies, but I think the one I had saved my life. Then we rode our bikes back to the condo to shower. The rehearsal party for the wedding was scheduled for 7 PM. Alice’s plan for the rest of the day included shopping in the trendy boutiques in the marina area, lunch and then a long, languorous afternoon on the beach. I liked that plan. After cardio-tennis, anything short of the Bataan Death March would be welcome. I’m sure that was Alice’s intention. Torture me first, then I’d be putty in her hands.

I might have felt used, but since she asked me to shower with her, I decided not to hold a grudge. Especially after she asked me to lather her up.

***

It was going to be a beach wedding, but since the chairs and other equipment wouldn’t be set up until the next day, the wedding party went through its paces inside the Shoals Club prior to the rehearsal party. Barry was Jewish and had brought along his own rabbi, who happened to be a college chum of his. The guy was single, had long flowing hair and spent much of his time hitting on two of Laurene’s bridesmaids. There were six bridesmaids in all, two of whom were Barry’s married sisters. Two were women she had met while traveling in Barry’s circle and two, the ones the rabbi paid the most attention to, were from her former life as a paid escort.

“I wonder what Rabbi Klein would say if he knew Wabiba and Annette are hookers,” Laurene said to me at one point.

“I don’t think it would matter,” I replied. “They are knockouts.”

“I think it is quite fitting, Alton. You know what they say. Marriage is just another form of prostitution.”

“You can’t kid a kidder, Laurene. You and Barry don’t need each other’s money and don’t care a fig for the past. You’re in love.”

“What about you and Alice? Gonna get hitched?”

“Subject hasn’t come up. She’s just starting her career in the Ivy’s, at Barnard. I’ve got nothing against the institution. Marriage, I mean. But we have time. We’ll see what happens.”

“She’d be a fool to let you go,” Laurene said with conviction. “And vice versa. She knows that I’ve tried to bop you, and still treats me like a princess. That’s special. Even though she knows you’re more of a father figure now.”

“Ouch.”

“Uncle figure?”

“Please stop.”

Laurene laughed.

“Do you remember that time you slapped some sense into me in the hotel room, right after I tried to seduce you?”

I felt my face becoming red with shame.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

Laurene put her arm through mine.

“You would have been within your rights to chuck me out the goddamn window. And you apologized right away, and then made sure I was protected, even after I almost got you killed. That’s when I knew I had to get out of the business.” She gave me a crafty smile. “When I put away enough money, of course. No use rushing into things.”

“You were always a practical sort,” I said.

Alice walked over to join us.

“What are you two laughing about?”

“Old times,” I said.

“We loved your gift,” Laurene said. “A Baccarat vase. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I usually try to avoid wedding gifts that can later be used as a murder weapon,” I said, “but in this instance I’m not worried.”

“The Rahms sent a gift, too,” Laurene said. “A beautiful antique silver and ceramic samovar. With a nice note wishing us the best. Like your gift, it went to Barry’s apartment. I guess you gave them the address.”

“I didn’t. But the Rahms have their ways of finding out things.”

“I don’t think even Ashleigh Harper could write a book about all this,” Alice said. “It’s too weird.”

“That reminds me,” Laurene said, “Barry says you are all set for the luncheon on Sunday. Your names will be at the door and if anyone gives you a hard time, just drop the name of the guy who works for him.”

“Godfrey Benedetto.”

“That’s the guy. He has some serious juice with those publishing dudes.”

***

I behaved myself at the rehearsal party, which I glumly took as a sign of either age or common sense, maybe both.  And I spent the next morning at the beach with Alice before going over to one of the three houses Barry rented and picking up my tux.

At 1 PM sharp I walked Laurene Robillard down the aisle between rows of lawn chairs on hard-packed sand. Barry Lewinsohn stood proudly next to his Rabbi buddy, and they were flanked by the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Some of the latter looked a little worse for wear. Rehearsal parties that include call girls can do that.

All the groomsmen were decked in off-white tuxedos, as were Barry and I. It’s not my favorite color. But it also was not my wedding. The bridesmaids wore classy strapless pink dresses that looked more like ball gowns than anything else. That was a relief. I’ve seen bridesmaid dresses that must have been designed by the  Amish.

“You look gorgeous,” I said to Laurene as we neared the lattice arch under which the ceremony would be performed.

She did. Her Vera Wang beaded sheath clung to her and she was radiant.

“I feel like a hypocrite wearing white,” she whispered.

“Why? It’s not Labor Day yet.”

She squeezed my arm in appreciation of my gallant remark. What I wanted to say was that she was now as pure a soul as I knew.

When we reached Barry I noticed Rabbi Klein, whose eyes were slightly bloodshot, glancing surreptitiously at Wabiba the bridesmaid, who looked like a Nubian princess. She winked at him and he blushed slightly. I wondered if he’d gotten a freebie.

I kissed Laurene and handed her over to Barry, then went and sat with Alice, who patted my hand and said, “Nice job.”

It was a lovely day. No bugs, warm with a slight breeze and blue sky. I was pretty sure that if it were my wedding, a Category 3 storm would be raging. The ceremony was brief and the Rabbi did not fall over. The happy couple stepped on the traditional glass and then we went inside for the reception.

I had a good time and even danced.

CHAPTER 5 - UNCLE ALTON

The luncheon reception for Ashleigh Harper was scheduled for 1 PM in one of the smaller dining rooms at the Shoals Club. Alice and I joined a line waiting to enter the room. There was a table set up just outside the door, where a young woman was checking people in. She had a name tag identifying her as an employee of the publisher, Albatross House. A burly man in an ill-fitting suit stood behind the table, looking stern.

A young girl was walking down the line speaking to everyone in turn. She finally reached us.

“Sir, I don’t suppose you have an extra ticket, do you?”

She was a cute, polite kid, brown hair pulled back tight in a bun. Her most startling feature were her big blue eyes, set wide apart under a high forehead. An upturned nose and smallish chin completed a look that reminded me of someone. She was dressed very conservatively in a skirt and light gray sweater.

“We don’t have any tickets at all,” I said. “Someone hopefully left our name at the door. You’re not invited?”

“No. I go to the Carolina College of Christian Studies in Fayetteville. I heard about this reception and drove down hoping to get in. I’m writing a paper on To Bury a Turtledove and its relevance to today’s Christians.”

With that, she moved down the line.

“Nice kid,” Alice said. “Kind of reminds me of Ellen Page. I hope she can get in.”

“That’s who I was thinking of,” I said. “The girl from Juno.”

“Great movie,” Alice said.

“She’ll need a miracle to get into this thing. They had less security for the Pope.”

“Don’t be irreverent.”

We reached the table and I gave our names. The women checked a list.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Rhode. Mr. Benedetto called about you. He also told me to give you these. He didn’t want you to have to buy them.” She reached into a box and handed us two copies of The Lighthouse Chronicles. “I hope you enjoy the reception.”

I thanked the woman and Alice and I walked into the room. I nodded at the man standing by the door, who merely glared at me. Probably security. The room looked like it sat perhaps a hundred people, arranged in tables of 10 in front of a small dais. There were a few empty seats at the tables near the door, which suited me fine. I dislike sitting at the front of anything, especially receptions. Most of them bore me, and I like the option of a quick exit. Alice knows of my predilection and gladly puts up with it. Unlike most beautiful women, who want to be noticed and thus sit in front of any gathering, she is content to listen and learn. It’s the teacher in her.

We grabbed the last two seats at one of the tables. I was eying the fruit cup, which looked fresh, could smell the basket of bread, always a good sign. Perhaps this wouldn’t be too bad. Alice was chatting with a couple on our left, when I heard a man’s voice at the door.

“Get lost, sister,” he said loudly.

I turned and saw the security guy holding the arm of the young girl who had approached us for tickets. He was shoving her away, none too gently. The Albatross woman at the check-in table looked distressed. There was no one else in line and I assumed that the girl had waited until the very end to see if she could get into the room. She looked to be on the verge of tears.

“Please, sir, you are hurting my arm,” the girl said. “I only asked if I could speak to someone about buying an extra ticket.”

The ruckus had attracted Alice’s attention.

“Alton!”

I knew that tone. Rhode to the rescue! I got up and walked over.

“What’s the problem here?”

The man looked at me.

“No problem, chum. This broad is trying to crash the reception.”

The “chum” was enough to set my teeth on edge, but I decided that making a scene was not going to help the girl.

So I calmly said, “You might want to take your hand off my niece.”

That threw him for a loop.

“Your niece?”

“Your hand?”

He let her go. She stared at me, wide-eyed. The Albatross employee, seeing a possible out from a nasty situation, said, “I didn’t know your niece was coming, Mr. Rhode. She’s not on the list.”

I gave her my best smile.

“A miscommunication. When I told Godfrey I needed tickets, I assumed he knew my niece was staying with us.”

Just then, another woman walked over to our little group.

“What’s the problem, Leonard.”

The security man sputtered, “This bro …, I mean this lady doesn’t have a ticket. I didn’t know she was related to this guy.”

He pointed at me. The woman turned to me.

“And you are?”

“Alton Rhode.”

“He is a friend of Mr. Benedetto,” the check-in lady said helpfully. “He called to make sure they could get into the luncheon. But he forgot to tell us about Mr. Rhode’s niece.”

“He also forgot to tell you to reserve a book for her,” I said archly.

“We’ll certainly get her a copy, Mr. Rhode,” the new woman said. “And, of course, your niece is most welcome.”

She gave the security man a withering look and then led us into the room.

“I’m Alexandra Nidus.” She extended her hand. “I am Ashleigh Harper’s attorney and adviser. I am sorry about what just happened. But Ashleigh is very fragile, both emotionally and physically. We try to keep these sorts of events to a minimum, and manageable. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

“Of course. But perhaps you should have a word with the security service you employ. The man at the door is a little rough around the edges.”

She smiled. It was a good smile. In fact, Alexandra Nidus was a good-looking woman. Tall and rangy, with lush red hair that fell to her shoulders and a face that, while not traditionally pretty, was nevertheless arresting. She also reminded me of someone, but again I couldn’t come up with a name. She was wearing a plum-colored three-button pants suit that accentuated her long legs. Her hazel eyes were startling.

“Oh, Leonard is not really a security man. I’m afraid he’s like a fish out of water at these things. Not surprising, really, since he is mainly a charter boat captain who also helps me out from time to time at Miss Harper’s house. I have an office there and spend a lot of time seeing to her needs. But I’ll talk to him.” She put her hand on my arm. “I would appreciate it if our little contretemps did not get back to Mr. Benedetto.”

“Don’t worry, Ms. Nidus. He won’t hear a word from me.”

“Thank you. I’ll have that extra book brought over to your niece. And please call me Sandy. Everyone else does.”

I offered my seat to my “niece” but she said she would be fine and found a spot at another table.

“That was nicely done,” Alice said when I sat back down, “Uncle Alton.”

“A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.”

Alice looked at me.

“Don Corleone, in The Godfather,” I said. “Can you pass the rolls?”

CHAPTER 6 - ANNA

The luncheon reception was more than half over when there was a discernible buzz from the crowd and I spotted Alexandra Nidus wheeling an elderly woman into the room through a side door.

“There she is,” a woman at the next table said excitedly, and there was a smattering of applause.

The woman in the wheelchair waved an arm. The gesture reminded me of videos of Queen Elizabeth acknowledging the crowd from her Rolls-Royce as she entered the grounds of Buckingham Palace in London. Nidus moved the woman to a spot next to a small podium on the dais. Then she took the microphone at the podium and said, “Miss Harper is not feeling well, but would like to say a few words. Then, I’m afraid we’ll have to get her home so that she can rest.”

She handed the microphone to the older woman.

“Ah would like to thank y’all all for comin’,” she said, in a Southern drawl. She looked at Nidus, who looked stunned. “And ah’m sorry ah can’t stay longer. Ah hope y’all have enjoyed your lunch.”

With that, she handed the mike back to Alexandra Nidus, who promptly wheeled her out of the room.

A man at my table said, “What the hell? That’s all we get for a hundred bucks?”

I looked at Alice.

“Well, at least we did not have to pay for the tickets,” she said. “I heard she was very private, but this is disappointing.”

There were sounds of grumbling from other tables.

“Follow me,” I said, “and bring the books.”

We got up and headed toward the door where the two women had exited. I spotted my “niece” on the way. She, too, looked disappointed. I told her to come with us.

I ran ahead and caught up to them in the parking lot. The wheelchair was folded and stowed in the back of a large golf cart, which was just pulling away, with the man named Leonard driving. Alexandra seemed to be arguing with Harper. I thought I heard her say “fucking accent”.

“Lenny!” I shouted. “Wait up!”

The cart stopped. I walked over and he looked at me, confused.

“What do you want?”

“You must have been a getaway driver in a previous life, Len. That was one of the fastest exits I’ve ever seen.”

“We’re in a hurry, chum. Miss Harper is tired.”

I ignored him and smiled at Sandy Nidus.

“I never got a chance to thank you for all you did for us,” I said, “especially allowing my niece to attend. Both she and Alice are big fans of Miss Harper.”

“I was happy to help,” she said, “but we must get Miss Harper home.”

Alice and the girl came up behind me.

“Godfrey told us there would be no problem with them having a chat with her, and maybe getting their books signed.”

Alice kicked me in the back of my ankle. She hates it when I make stuff up. I’ve told her there is a whole chapter on how to lie in the private eye manual.

“Perhaps we could follow you and speak to her at her house,” I said, “where she might be more comfortable.”

“She don’t sign books, chum,” Leonard said.

I ignored him again and upped the wattage of my smile to Nidus. Not too high, though. I didn’t want her to start disrobing in public.

“Gee, that’s not what good old Godfrey told us.”

I wondered if I was going to get Barry Lewinsohn in trouble. But he was a Wall Street guy. He was no stranger to lies. Besides, Laurene would back me on anything.

The Benedetto name was still golden, because Sandy said, “Of course, Miss Harper will sign your books. And here is just fine. Isn’t that right, Ashleigh?”

I looked at Harper, who on closer inspection looked a lot better than she had at a distance. Her skin tone, even under what I thought was too much makeup, was good. She had sharp, even cunning, hazel eyes.

“Ah’d be delighted, honey,” she said. “Ah love meetin’ my fans.”

Alexandra Nidus visibly swallowed.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Leonard said.

“That’s enough, Mr. Vole,” Nidus said sharply.

Alice and my “niece” handed Harper their copies. She asked their names, and that’s how I found out the girl’s was Anna. Harper signed Alice’s book first and I saw her scratch something out. Then she signed Anna’s. She looked at me and held out her hand. It took me a moment to realize that she expected me to want her to sign my copy. I handed it to her and told her my first name. When she handed the book back I noticed that she had misspelled “Alton” as “Altin”. I did not care enough to correct her and just thanked her.

“I know you must be tired, Miss Harper,” Anna said, “but I would love to interview you for the paper I am doing at college. Can I come back and see you?”

Before the older woman could reply, Nidus said, “Miss Harper no longer gives interviews, dear. But here is my card. You can email me with any questions you have and I’m sure we can work something out. Now, we must get going. I’m sure you understand.”

I knew I had pressed our luck about as far as I could, so we said our goodbyes, and they drove away. I took Alice’s copy and looked at what Harper had written. It was a boilerplate “To Alice, From Ashleigh Harper” signing, marred only by the scratching out of a couple of letters before “Ashleigh”. The scratched-out letters were hard to read, but they looked like “Bes”.

“I wonder what she started to write,” I said when I gave the book back to Alice.

“Probably ‘Best Wishes’ or something like that. It doesn’t matter. It’s a nice keepsake, don’t you think? She has such nice, precise penmanship.”

“At least she spelled your name correctly.”

I showed her the inscription in my copy.

“It’s a natural mistake. You should have spelled it for her.”

“What did you think about her julep and magnolia accent? You could cut it with a knife.”

“Yes, that was a bit surprising. I thought she would be more, I don’t know, sophisticated.”

“Ah think you Yankees ‘ahre such snobs,” I said. “Jes cause we talk funny down h’eah don’t mean we ain’t ahducated.”

“That may be the worst Southern accent I’ve ever heard,” Alice said.

We started walking back into the building.

“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done,” Anna said.

“We were happy to help,” Alice said. “I’m just sorry you did not get your interview. But at least you can email some questions.”

Suddenly, a song drifted up from Anna’s wrist. It was “Let It Go” from the Disney movie, Frozen. A few years earlier it seemed as if every little girl in the country was singing the song.

“Oh sorry, that’s my alarm,” she said, turning it off. “I have to get going, or I’ll miss my bus.”

The watch was blue and pink and had a picture on it. It looked tiny on her wrist. She saw me looking at it.

“It’s Princess Anna of Arendelle,” she explained, tapping the picture. “I know it’s silly. But Sam, that’s my brother, gave it to me for my birthday. It’s kooky, I know. But I loved the movie.”

“You’re not staying on Bald Head?” Alice asked

“I’m not. I took a bus from Fayetteville to Southport. There’s one leaving at 5 o’clock to go back. It’s the last one tonight. So I have to catch the 3:30 ferry to make it.”

“How long a bus trip is it?”

“About six hours. It’s not direct. It goes through Raleigh.”

“So you won’t get back to school until very late?”

I could see that Alice was concerned.

“That’s OK. I don’t have any classes tomorrow.”

“Then, why don’t you wait until morning?” I said.

“I doubt I could get a room in a motel this weekend, even on the mainland. Not any I could afford, anyway. I’ll be fine, but I must go. Thank you, again.”

She got up to leave, but Alice put a hand on her arm.

“We have an extra bedroom. Unless you have a solid reason for having to be back at school, you are staying with us. Alton can run you to the ferry tomorrow morning. I don’t want you traveling six hours on a bus at night.”

“I couldn’t let you do that. You’ve been kind enough.”

“Anna, please don’t argue with her,” I said. “It’s a losing proposition, as I’ve found out many times. I drove this part of the country during the day and don’t like the idea of you taking a bus at night, either. Now, come with us. Let’s go into the bar for a drink.” I caught myself. She was probably underage and went to a Christian college. “Maybe a soda?”

She smiled.

“The Good Lord made wine from water at Cana,” she said, smiling. “I wouldn’t mind a Chardonnay.”

The bartender carded her, but I needn’t have worried. Anna pulled out a driver’s license. When she put it back in her purse, she smiled at me.

“Fake proof. I’m in college, remember.”

“The Lord doth work in mysterious ways,” I said.

Her name was Anna Dickson and I could tell she was fascinated by Alice, and her accomplishments. That made two of us. She was a really nice kid, who had made a good start in life that had its share of tragedies. Both her parents were dead. She was on scholarship at school and her only close relative was her older brother, who was a missionary in Ecuador, and who she adored. She hoped to join him at his mission eventually. After a pleasant half hour or so at the bar and two bowls of peanuts, most of which I ate, we went back to the condo. I told the girls I would take them to dinner later but Anna insisted on repaying our kindness by cooking for us. I remembered meals prepared by college kids, and that must have shown on my face. Anna laughed.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Rhode. I’m a great cook. My brother and I have basically been on our own for years and I’ve done most of the cooking. Even took some classes.”

“I’m not sure we have much in the larder,” I said, still looking for a way out.

“I told you I stocked up at that gourmet market,” Alice said. “I’m sure Anna and I can whip up something. It will be fun.”

“You win,” I said. “But only if Anna stops calling me Mr. Rhode. Pretty soon she’ll be bringing me my pipe and slippers.”

“You have neither,” Alice said. “But you do look like you could use a nap. I’m going for a swim. Want to join me, Anna?”

“I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“I just bought a couple. One of them should fit you.”

The nap sounded like a splendid idea. I stopped worrying about dinner.

CHAPTER 7 - CAPTAIN VOLE

I awoke to the smell of fresh apple pie, which I soon discovered was cooling on the kitchen counter. As far as wake-up odors go, it’s in my top five. I looked at my watch. It was just after 5 PM. I guess I needed that nap.

I heard conversation coming from the deck. I could see Alice and Anna in lounge chairs taking the sun. I was halfway onto the deck when I realized they were topless. Alice didn’t do anything, but the girl crossed her arms over her chest. I mumbled an apology and started to go back inside.

“Alton, you don’t have to go,” Alice said. “We’ll get decent.”

They both put on the tops of their bikinis as I sat in a chair. I figured that either looking away or obvious staring could be considered rude, so I opted for the nonchalant glance. Since I was pretty familiar with Alice’s anatomy, most of the glance went to Anna’s. She was petite, with a firm figure and small but perky breasts with large pink nipples. She did not seem the least perturbed that I’d seen them. It made me wish I was back in college.

“I think I’ll start dinner,” she said.

After she went into the house, Alice and I stared out at the ocean. It was a beautiful day.

“Enjoy the view?”

“You bet,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

“The Lord doth …”

“Oh, be quiet.”

A little while later the apple pie smell was getting a serious run for its money in the kitchen. Anna apparently did know how to cook.

Alice stood.

“I think I’ll see if I can help her.”

Alice has many strong suits, but cooking isn’t one of them.

“Don’t help too much,” I said.

“Suck farts. Why don’t you make yourself useful and open some wine?”

I did and we each had a glass with some canapés that Anna had somehow crafted out of cheese, olives and prosciutto. Dinner consisted of an arugula salad with olive oil, lemon and feta cheese, followed by sautéed chicken with a tarragon and wine reduction, and roasted potatoes. The meal was high-end-restaurant quality and I said so, having resisted the temptation to tell Anna that she was going to make some man very happy someday. That might be considered as sexist. Besides, I had recently seen her boobs and the remark might have an entirely different connotation. I don’t consider myself politically correct, but I’m no Cosby either.

We took our coffee and pie out to the deck.

“What are you going to do after you graduate, Anna?” Alice said.

“Eventually I’d like to join Sam in his missionary work, but he thinks I should be a little older. He’s very protective, but he’s probably right. So, I’ve applied for a teaching position at Alliance College. It’s a Christian college in Westchester. That’s near New York City, isn’t it?”

“Just north of Manhattan,” I said, getting up for another piece of pie, which both women declined.

That bode well for a slice of breakfast pie. I did gladly refresh their coffees, however.

“Alliance has a Manhattan campus in Greenwich Village,” Anna said. “I’m hoping they send me there.”

“Anna, if you come to New York, you must call me,” Alice said. “I live in the Village. Before you leave, I’ll give you my contact information. And I’ll be teaching, myself. At Barnard. Very near Alliance. I want you to stay in touch.”

***

The next morning, on the way to the ferry, I dropped Alice off at the tennis courts for more torture from the indefatigable Jeff. She gave Anna a big hug and got another promise to stay in touch.

“She is so wonderful,” Anna said as we left.

“She thinks you are, too,” I said.

As we approached the ferry terminal we passed a row of fishing boats.

“There is that man from the luncheon,” Anna said.

“What man?”

“The one who tried to keep us out.”

I spotted him right away. Vole. Leonard Vole. He was using a hose from the dock to wash down the deck of a good-looking cabin cruiser with a fishing chair in its stern. He was wearing shorts, with no shirt, and muscles rippled across his tanned back. He looked more at home in that outfit than in the suit he was probably forced to wear at the reception for Ashleigh Harper.

“I did not like him,” Anna said. “I thought he was very rude.”

“He was out of his element,” I said. “He’s probably a better fisherman than he is a security guard.”

“That wouldn’t be hard,” Anna said.

At the ferry terminal she gave me a hug and a fatherly kiss on the cheek and I manfully suppressed the memory of her perky breasts. There was a crowd of people already boarding the next boat.

“Make sure you get in touch with Alice if you get to New York,” I said. “She’s counting on that.”

“Oh, I will. She gave me all her contact information. You’ve both been wonderful. I can’t wait to see you again.”

With that, she was off up the ramp, and, with a final wave, disappeared into the ferry cabin.

I drove back along the docks. Vole was still working on his boat. I saw the name on the side: She Got the House. I smiled. Vole probably had good reason to be a pain in the ass. Many of the other boat slips were empty. I got out and approached him. He looked up. It took him a moment to place me.

“Can I help you, chum?”

“Maybe,” I said. “No charter today?”

“Guys canceled. Last minute.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It happens. Goes with the territory.”

I didn’t like him, but I felt sorry he lost the income. It was a hit-and-miss occupation. Probably why he moonlighted doing security work.

“Good fishing this time of year?”

“Pretty good. Another week will be better. But I can catch fish any time of the year.”

“What’s running now?

“Bluefish are starting to show up. Big ones. Spanish mackerel, dolphin, some Kings, red drums, tuna, false albacore, tarpon.”

“Anything big?”

“Sure. Wahoo, white marlin. And sharks, spinners and black tips, mostly.”

Vole was in his element. He obviously enjoyed talking about fishing. Whatever else he was, Vole was proud of his ability on the water. I made a snap decision. Bald Head Island was located where the mouth of the Cape Fear River meets the Atlantic Ocean. According to the guidebooks I’d been reading, the sandbars nearby, called the Frying Pan Shoals, was famous for their fishing. I’d thought about trying my luck. Why not with Vole? He might be a hard-ass, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a good fisherman.

“Can you go out this afternoon?”

“With you?”

He looked surprised.

“Yes. You have a half-day rate?”

He did. It wasn’t that bad. I was in a splurging mood. Besides, a day on the ocean with salt spray in my face sounded a hell of a lot better than what Alice probably had planned for me. I didn’t want to give Jeff the tennis torturer another shot. I told Vole he had a charter.

He told me to meet him back at the dock at 1 PM.

CHAPTER 8 - TEN-POUND HEADS

The She Got the House was a good-sized boat. I went into the cabin to look around while Vole took her out of the marina. There was a metal table next to a bench on one wall. Opposite was a counter where a small knife with a sharp blade stuck vertically out of a block of well-worn wood. From the spools of line on a shelf next to the knife I assumed that Vole used it to rig his lures.

I went back on deck. I liked to fish. Have since childhood. I preferred fresh-water angling with spinning rods and fondly recalled trying to match wits with largemouth bass in upstate New York ponds. The fact that they have a brain the size of a pea and usually outwitted me did not decrease the fun. More recently, I have been going out bluefishing with Porgie Carmichael, a one-time inept criminal who now, thanks to my soft heart and appreciation — he took a beating rather than follow an order to kill me — now runs the Great Kills Marina for the Rahm family on Staten Island. Arman Rahm insisted that the marina is one of the family’s legitimate operations, but I still made him promise that Porgie would never be asked to conduct a burial at sea.

From the size of the stout rod in the holder in Vole’s fishing chair, I did not think we were going after bluefish. It was rigged for bigger game. The lure attached to the wire leader at the end of the line was huge, almost a foot long. I'd caught bass smaller than that monstrosity, which had three sets of treble hooks, the last of which was attached to one of the rod guides.

It took us about a half hour to get where Vole wanted to start fishing. He idled the engine and came down out of the cockpit to set up the rod. Vole was wearing a cutoff t-shirt and shorts. Up close, he was an even more impressive specimen, with deeply-tanned muscular legs and arms. On his right bicep was tattooed the distinctive Navy SEAL insignia of a golden eagle clutching an anchor, trident, and flintlock style pistol. I always wondered about that flintlock. I doubted that SEALS ever used them. Vole threw the lure into the water and let line out.

“We’ll troll a while. Get in the chair.”

“What are we after? Moby Dick?”

“Small lure, small fish,” Vole said. “Big lure, big fish. We ain’t after fuckin’ guppies.”

He went back to the wheel and the boat surged ahead, but slowly. We had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when the rod bent in its holder and the reel’s drag began clacking as line was pulled out. I knew right away it wasn’t a guppy.

“Fish on!” Vole shouted. He again idled the engines. “Set the hook! Give it a good yank. Then start reeling and let’s see what we’ve got.”

I did as told. The fish continued to take out line.

“Tighten the drag!”

The reel was unfamiliar to me. When I hesitated, he clambered down from the cockpit and showed me how to do it by turning a knob on the side of the reel. Soon, I was gaining ground, or water, on the fish.

“Cobia,” Vole said.

“How can you tell?”

“They don’t jump. Take long runs. Like to head to bottom.”

It took me 15 minutes to tire the fish out and bring it close enough for Vole to gaff it. There was a small hinged platform that could be lowered from the stern and Vole maneuvered the fish onto it before heaving it to the deck. It thrashed about wildly. Vole picked up a wooden truncheon, what cops call a billy club, and whacked the fish on its head. Porgie Carmichael used the same type on recalcitrant bluefish. Vole knew what he was doing. My fish stopped moving.

“I told you it was a cobia,” Vole said, lifting the fish up by its gills. “Nice one, too. Might be 50 pounds.”

It may have been 50 pounds, but Vole held it out for me to admire with about as much effort as if it was a five-pound pickerel. I didn’t know a cobia from a cobra, but I took Vole’s word for it. It was a handsome dark-brown fish with a spindle-shaped body and broad, flattened head with large and sharp-looking dorsal spines.

“They don’t have swim bladders,” Vole explained, “which is why they can dive so deep.”

“I guess it’s not catch-and-release,” I said, looking at the dead fish.

“Cobias are great eating. I’ll carve you some steaks. After this, just let me know what you want to throw back alive. I can sell the ones we keep to the restaurants.”

He threw the cobia in the cooler and then set my rod up again. Twenty minutes later I hooked my first tuna. It was a small one and I had no trouble landing it.

“Throw it back,” Vole said. “Where there’s one, there’s others, and bigger.”

He was right. I almost immediately hooked a much bigger fish. I had to work the drag several times to get it right. I was winning my battle when then things started to go crazy. All of a sudden, the rod gave a sharp jolt and then the reeling became a lot easier. At first I thought the fish had broken off, but I could still feel something on the line. I brought it in and lifted the head of what had once been a very large tuna out of the water. Everything behind its gills was missing. Those gills were dripping blood and opening and shutting reflexively. The tuna’s big glassy eyes looked startled, but I supposed they always looked that way.

“Fucking shark got it,” Vole said.

Maybe the tuna was startled, after all.

Vole yanked the lure from the tuna’s severed head and threw it back out. We trolled some more and I got another hit. But it was the same story. The tuna put up a hell of a fight until a shark hit it. I pulled in another 10-pound head. After the third time I began to feel like the man running the guillotine during the French Revolution.

“It’s shark city out here,” Vole said, disgustedly. “Look at them all.”

The boat, which suddenly felt a lot smaller, was surrounded by sharks, some quite large.

“I hate the sons of bitches. They’ve ruined a lot of my charters.” Vole held up my latest shortened fish. “You ever catch a shark?”

“No. But it’s starting to look like it may be the other way around.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not going swimming.”

“What kind are they?”

“Black tips. Don’t fight like the spinners, which come right out of the water, but they’ll give you a good tussle.”

The sharks circling the boat did indeed have dorsal fins tipped black. Vole ripped the lure out of the tuna’s mouth and dipped into his tackle box. He came out with a huge hook, which he rammed right through the fish head behind its gills. Then he threw it overboard and let out some line. It did not take long before one of the sharks gobbled it up. Vole waited until he was sure the bait was lodged in the shark’s maw and then reared back on the rod and set the hook. He put the rod in the holder.

“It’s a big one,” he said.

I grabbed the rod as the line started screaming out.

“Tighten the drag!”

I did.

“Not that much! You want him to take line, but also want him to work for it. Got to tire the bastard out.”

I soon found the right equilibrium. I’d reel the shark in until it decided on another run. Then, I let it. A couple of times the big fish sounded and headed under the boat, but Vole, back in the cockpit, anticipated its every move and steered the She Got the House away. It was late afternoon and cool on the water, but I was sweating. My arms ached, and I could feel a knot in my back between my shoulder blades. But, by God, I was loving it. Occasionally the shark came to the surface. As its black tipped dorsal fin cut the water about 100 feet out I could see how big it was. Even Vole was impressed.

“Must be near 200 pounds,” he said. “Most around here run half that. Record is only 270.”

A half-hour later, Vole gaffed the shark. It took both of us to lift it into the boat. It started thrashing around on a deck that now seemed too cramped for the three of us. The shark whipped its tail and knocked me down. I suspected that this wasn’t going to be catch-and release, and Vole soon proved me right. He grabbed his billy club and started bashing the shark in the head. This was no one-shot cobia. Vole must have clubbed it 10 times before it finally stopped moving. And then he kept on hitting it, with all his might, until the shark’s head turned into a bloody pulp. Vole was like a man possessed. I finally grabbed his arm.

“I think it’s dead, Vole. Pretty soon you’re going to have shark soup.”

He turned to me, eyes blazing. His shirt and face were splotched with shark blood, as was most of the deck. He looked slightly mad.

“I hate the fuckers,” he rasped.

“I guess this one isn’t going back, either,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

He flung the club away.

“Never was. Black tips are good eating. I can sell this one to Mojo’s for a good price. They have a shark special.” He looked at me. “Unless you want it.”

“Be my guest.”

He looked at the sky.

“It’s getting late. I think we should head back in. Look at all them sharks.”

There must have been 10 of them circling the boat.

I didn’t argue. It was obvious we weren’t going to catch anything else but sharks. Besides, I’d gotten my money’s worth. I had seen nature at its most murderous.

Both inside and outside the boat.

On the way back in, we had a chance to talk. Or, rather, I had a chance. Vole was a man of few words. But I wanted to find out more about him.

“How long have you worked for Ashleigh Harper?”

“A little while.”

“She seems like a nice lady. What else do you do for her?”

“Odd jobs. Shopping. Things like that.”

“You like it?”

“It’s a job.”

I was about to ask him about his SEAL tattoo when he said, “You ask a lot of questions, chum. You come out here to fish, or get my life story.”

“Sorry. It’s a habit. I do it for a living.”

“What? You a reporter or something?”

“Private Investigator.”

Vole looked at me sharply.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m off duty. On vacation. I was just curious. I’ll shut up.”

“Suits me.”

Back at the dock, Vole quickly and efficiently cleaned and filleted my cobia. It was obvious there would be too much for me and Alice, so I took only two large steaks and told him to keep the rest. He grunted what I assumed was thanks. I got another grunt when I paid him. He flung the battered shark onto the dock, no mean feat with a fish weighing 200 pounds. When I left, he was swabbing its blood from his boat.

When I got back to the condo, Alice, who was sipping a white wine on the terrace, greeted me warmly.

“You smell like a fish. Go take a shower.”

I handed her the packages of my fish.

“See if you can find a good recipe on the Internet for cobia. It’s supposed to be delicious.” I saw the look on her face. “Don’t worry, I’ll do the cooking.”

An hour later we finished the last of what turned out to be an excellent meal. Simply pan-grilled with lemon, mustard, capers and white wine, the cobia was delicious, with a firm white flesh. For a side we had a simple arugula salad and finished the meal off with Anna’s apple pie.

“I had a nice day,” I said.

“How was Captain Vole?”

“Crazy as a loon, but a good fisherman.”

I told Alice about the shark.

“Maybe he had a bad experience with a shark once.”

“He’s too young to have been on the Indianapolis.”

“The what?”

“I’m being facetious. It was a World War II cruiser that took the A-bomb to Tinian before we dropped it on Japan. It was torpedoed on the way home and about 1,000 sailors went into the water. It was a secret mission so nobody knew they were missing for days. Except the sharks, who got most of them.”

“How horrible.”

“Hell, maybe he has his own shark story. He was a SEAL, after all. But I think he has deeper problems. I’m surprised Ashleigh Harper employs him. Seems out of character.”

“Well, he’ll keep her safe from sharks.”

“More wine?” I said, laughing.

“No, I think I want dessert.”

“We just had dessert.”

Alice gave me a look that I knew well. It was a look that I suppose all women have. Her face went soft, a small smile creased her lips, and her eyes seemed to slant slightly. She got up without a word and put out her hand.

***

“This has been a wonderful vacation,” Alice said languidly.

We were in bed. She was sprawled naked across my body, which like hers, glistened with sweat. Making love with Alice is not unlike cardio-tennis. There are few breaks.

“Yes, it was.”

She pushed herself up on her arms and wiggled her shoulders.

“Do you like my breasts?”

They were swaying inches from my face. I licked a nipple, which was still engorged.

“They are nine and ten on my list, which only goes up to ten.”

“Nine and ten?”

“I alternate, depending on which one I’m fondling.”

Alice giggled.

“Are my tatas nicer than Anna’s?”

“Of course. But that’s not a knock on her knockers. She’s a cute kid.”

“You couldn’t keep your eyes off them.”

“Just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at a menu.”

“She’s not a virgin, you know.”

I was surprised.

“You can tell just by looking at her?”

“She told me. We had a nice long talk on the deck when you were snoozing.”

“Nice girls like you talk about that kind of stuff?”

“You still consider me a nice girl after what we just did?”

“Perverts can be nice,” I said.

That got me an ear twist.

“Ouch.”

“Of course girls talk sex.”

“You didn’t talk about our sex life, did you?”

“I did mention that you liked to do it wearing a Santa outfit.” She laughed. “Of course, not. We’re not like guys. We’re not crude. It’s just interesting. She wanted to know about us, how we met and that sort of thing. One thing led to another. She’s had two lovers. More experiments than anything else. But she liked it.”

“Not exactly what I’d expected from a girl in Bible school.”

“You’re too prudish. Anna is just a normal, healthy college girl. She’s got her head on straight. She hopes to find the right guy eventually and settle down, raise a family. But she wants to finish her education and missionary work first.”

“With her brother?”

“Yes. I really like her.”

“So do I. She cooks a mean apple pie. If it’s any consolation, it’s what I imagine first when I think of her.”

“I’m not much of a cook.”

I rolled on top of her.

“Which is why I imagine this first when I think of you.”

A few minutes later I wasn’t thinking at all.

CHAPTER 9 - GOLF AND GOSSIP

I thought I might be pushing the relationship envelope by playing a round of golf on our last full day on the island. The course that I drove by every day looked spectacular, as most courses on the ocean – or in this case, in the ocean – usually do. The combination of wild sand dunes and dark green fairways are catnip to even a recreational golfer such as myself.

Alice has golfed, and she’s not bad. But for her, the game is a way to get some fresh air. She considers me a bit too competitive. I’ve suggested that I could tone down my fervor when playing with her. I’d even tried to sound sincere. She saw right through me.

“We’re in love,” she said. “Let’s not screw it up.”

That kind of common sense is one of the reasons I love her.

But I had gone fishing the day before, and broached the golf subject carefully.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I did not expect, or want you, to be my nursemaid on this trip. This is supposed to be cathartic for the both of us.” She smiled sweetly. “Besides, you know I’ll get even. There are all sorts of academic dinners you will be expected to squire me to at Barnard.”

I hate academic dinners, and academic poseurs, to the point that Alice often asks me to leave my gun at home. But fair is fair.

“One other thing,” Alice said. “I expect a gourmet dinner at the club tonight. Followed by another night of ecstasy.”

“I didn’t know Dancing with the Stars was on TV tonight,” I said.

She stuck her tongue out at me and pedaled away for an Audubon tour of the island, to be followed by a day at the Shoals Club spa and reading a book by the pool.

Thus freed, at least temporarily, from domestic tranquility, I threw my clubs and golf shoes in the cart and headed to the Bald Head Island Country Club.

I probably should have reserved a tee time, because when I arrived it was obvious that the course was pretty busy. But I got lucky. The assistant at the desk in the clubhouse pro shop said that there was a regular group of permanent island residents going out in 15 minutes.

“They usually have four, but one dropped out. They were griping that it screwed up their betting game, so they wouldn’t mind a fourth, if you don’t mind losing a few bucks. What’s your handicap?”

I told him.

“You’d fit right in. They’re not hackers, but the PGA Tour is safe.”

“Sounds good,”

He picked up a walkie-talkie and called someone.

“Got a fourth for Fred’s group,” he said. “Tell them he’s coming out.”

An intelligible answer crackled back.

“You’re all set. All I need is your credit card.”

I gave it to him. He ran it then handed me a slip of paper.

“Give this to the starter. Have a nice round, Mr. Rhode. They are good guys and don’t fool around. Strict rules of golf. Play them as they lie and all that. One of them is the police chief. It’s his day off. If anyone cheats, he cuffs him. I’ll have someone bring your clubs out to the range and put them on one of their carts.”

I thanked him and then headed out to the practice area to meet the others in my foursome.

They were all a few years older than me, and obviously were pals. But they made me feel welcome. The police chief was named Fred Bentley. He was a short, stocky man with a gray crewcut and big ears. He would have looked better with longer hair, but he had a ready smile. The other two men, Jim Vitale and Charlie McAallister were real estate brokers, and looked the part. They laughed a lot.

An attendant had put my bags on Bentley’s cart. We all hit a few practice balls and then headed out to the first tee.

“I heard that you guys are sandbagging sharks, after tourist money.”

“You heard right,” Charlie said. “Playing golf without betting is like kissing your sister.”

“I’ve seen your sister,” Jim said. “All things considered, I’d rather play golf.”

“Up yours,” Charlie said and we all laughed.

I liked this bunch already.

“Is a $10 Nassau, front back and overall, too much for you,” Fred said.

“I’m shocked, shocked to learn that there is gambling going on in your jurisdiction, chief,” I said.

Jim said to Charlie, “Casablanca.”

“I know,” Charlie replied, a bit miffed.

“A $10 Nassua is just fine,” I said.

“Great, what’s your handicap?”

After a minute of mutual banter and not too much lying we worked out all the strokes, and Fred and I were partners against the other two. We’d play best ball in each cart. The most each of us could lose if we got completely shut out was $30, and that rarely happens. Besides, winners were expected to buy the drinks afterward in the clubhouse. I suspected that this bunch didn’t leave too much money on the table after a round.

The next four hours were pure bliss. It was a bit windy, as ocean courses usually are, but the layout was both beautiful and challenging. On one adjacent fairway I saw a foursome of women, one of whom was a tall redhead. I was pretty sure it was Alexandra Nidus. Bentley asked what I did for a living and, unlike some big city cops, did not have a problem with that. He had limited exposure to private investigators and was interested in what kind of cases I’d been involved in.

“We don’t get that kind of excitement down here,” he said, ruefully, at one point. “Just as well, I suppose. I have trouble attracting a good staff. I mean, I have some smart kids, but they are just punching a ticket before they move on to something better. Even turnover at the top was a problem, until I got here. I was a cop in Rocky Mount when this job opened up and I said what the hell. I could use some peace and quiet. My wife has some health problems. The ocean is good for her. The pay is good. Been chief seven years now. I think that’s a record.”

Fred was a decent golfer, and I managed not to embarrass myself, but we still lost $20 each, when he missed a 10-foot par putt on 18.

I teased him about it, and asked if I could make a citizen’s arrest, but I couldn’t hold his miss against him. It was a tough downhill putt with a severe break. Only luck would have gotten it in the cup at our skill level. At least he was on the green with a chance to tie the match. My ball was in the pond fronting the green, where it made an impressive splash just short of making landfall, much to the amusement of people watching from the terrace outside the club bar.

We all shook hands, exchanged a few final good-natured insults and headed into the bar. The place was crowded and lively, but we were able to snag a table away from the TV’s, from which various sports were blaring. A waitress walked over and took our orders. I asked for some munchies and she brought bowls of peanuts back with our bourbons and scotches. The first round went quickly and Charlie signaled the waitress for more drinks and peanuts. From there it was off to the races, and the winnings soon disappeared. Then we all chipped in some more money to keep the party going.

“Thank God they only allow golf carts on Bald Head,” I commented.

Fred laughed.

“Would you believe I’ve cited people for driving drunk in a cart?”

I was having a very good time. You aren’t always lucky enough to get put into a foursome with people you can enjoy. It’s silly to waste the experience.

I was almost finished my third drink when Alexandra Nidus and the women she’d been playing walked into the bar. She spotted me and said something to her friends and then came over to our table.

“How did you play, Mr. Rhode?’

“It’s Alton, please. And I managed not to kill myself.”

“He’s being modest, Sandy,” Fred said. “He carried me most of the match.”

“Until I hit it in the water. But it was fun. How about you?”

“I had a good round. I shot a 77.”

I wasn’t surprised. In the few minutes I watched her on the course it was obvious she could play. Tall and lanky, with an athletic swing, she would clean most men’s clocks.

“I’m glad you are enjoying the island. It has a lot to offer.”

“Sure does. I even got in some fishing yesterday with your friend, Vole.”

“He’s hardly my friend. But, yes, I know he took you out. How did you come to find him?”

She did not seem too pleased. I thought I detected some tension in her voice. I also noticed my companions exchanging glances.

“I was driving past his boat and spotted him. He’d just lost a charter, so I caught him at a good time. We only went out for half a day, but we saw plenty of action until the sharks came around. We even caught one of them. Big fellow. Vole knows his stuff. At least on the water.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that,” Nidus said. “I don’t really know that side of him. Well, nice to see you. When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I hope you have a safe trip.”

With that she rejoined her friends.

“She said ‘I don’t really know that side of him’,” Jim said. “That’s rich. I hear she knows all sides of him.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Fred said, with a cautionary tone. “Jim’s booze is doing the talking.”

Charlie leaned forward.

“Alton, I hope you don’t have any, ah, romantic ideas about Sandy,” he said.

“Charlie,” Fred said. “Shut up, why don’t you?”

“Hey, Kojak, give it a rest, will ya. You’re not in uniform. We might be saving this guy’s life.” He leaned in to me. “Vole is pounding her like a cutlet, and he’s crazy jealous. He sometimes porks her right on his boat. Some of the guys down the marina say it rocks even when the water is dead calm.”

“Vole and Nidus?”

I was really surprised.

“You’ve had too much to drink, too, Charlie,” Fred said. “You’re talking out of school.”

“Oh, for Christ sake, chief, it’s no secret. Vole thinks no one knows, but this is a small fuckin’ island and those fishermen talk like schoolgirls. Rumor is he almost killed a guy who made a move on her. I’m just warning Alton. I can’t figure it out myself. She seems so classy, and all. Looks like a young Maureen O’Hara, don’t you think?”

It clicked. That’s who I was thinking of when I first saw Nidus. The famous red-haired actress had died recently and her old movies were all over Turner Classic Movies in retrospectives.

“It must be because Vole was a Navy SEAL, or something,” Charlie continued. “The two of them go at it like rabbits.”

“She is a piece of ass,” Jim added. “I wonder if she is a natural redhead.”

“Enough!” The chief was getting annoyed. “Let’s get another round and talk golf.”

“You don’t know anything about golf, chief,” Jim retorted. “You proved that with your last putt.”

The table talk dissolved into more friendly put downs, and the relationship between Alexandra Nidus and Leonard Vole took a back burner.

But it still seemed bizarre to me.

***

“Alexandra Nidus and the security guy?”

It was morning of the following day and Alice and I were on the ferry back to the mainland. I was going to drive her back to Duke. I was pretty sure I could find Raleigh, with or without help from Gladys. It’s a big city.

“That’s what my golfing pals told me after our round.”

“Was there drinking involved?”

“Prodigious. But I believe it. The chief of police was one of the guys and he tried to shut the others up, but I could tell he knew it was true.”

“The chief of police?”

“Nice guy. It was his day off.”

“How did the subject even come up?”

“Sandy was in the clubhouse and came over to say hello to me. After she left, one of the guys warned me against making a pass at her. Said Vole was, and I quote, “pounding her like a cutlet”.

“That’s gross.”

“The guy also said Vole almost killed a guy in a jealous rage over her. That, I can also believe. There’s a screw loose in him somewhere. When he beat that shark into porridge with a billy club, I think he enjoyed it.”

“It was a shark, after all.”

“It was also already very dead.”

“She’s very beautiful,” Alice said. “But she’s not your type.”

“What’s not my type?”

“Any broad but me, honeybun” Alice said. “I wonder what she sees in him.”

I was about to say something when she held up her hand.

“Don’t,” Alice said. “Save your ‘hung like a horse’ comments for your 19th-hole conversations.”

“I wasn’t going to use a horse. In keeping with Vole’s main occupation, I was thinking more of a sperm whale.”

“Why don’t you suck farts?”

CHAPTER 10 - THE BROTHER

Six Weeks Later

It was one of those fall days when it feels like everything is right in the world.

I was walking back to my car after indulging myself with a Grizzly Burger in the Bear’s Den at Wagner College. The Den is the oldest and least modern of the school’s dining facilities, which are chrome, glass, plastic and salad bar palaces in comparison. The Den is in Wagner’s original administration building and the nearest salad is on the building’s ivy-covered walls, unless you count the lettuce, onions, tomatoes and pickles that sometimes, but not always, accompany the meat. Before lunch I had spent almost two hours in Wagner’s athletic facility, where I had lifetime membership thanks to some favors I’d done for the school president, and figured my constitution could stand a Grizzly Burger.

Wagner’s campus, high on Staten Island’s Grymes Hill overlooking New York Harbor, has to be one of the prettiest in the nation. Its hundreds of trees were a riot of fall colors. It was brisk without being uncomfortable, and many of the coeds were filling out sweaters. I wasn’t looking at all that many trees.

My cell phone beeped. It was Alice.

“I was just thinking about you,” I said.

“Alton, are you busy today?”

There was something in her voice.

“No.” That was truthful. It was Monday. Abby was doing some research for me but I was not actively working a case. My whole week was probably free. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Can you come into the city?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Samuel Dickson called me.” I drew a blank. Alice sensed it. “Anna’s brother. She’s the young girl who stayed with us in Bald Head. I’m meeting him this afternoon.”

“That’s nice.”

Somehow I knew it wasn’t.

“No. Anna is missing. He’s worried sick. And so am I.”

***

“Did you contact the police?”

“Of course, Mr. Rhode. The Bald Head Island cops were polite but after the season is over they only have a token force. I think the chief made an effort because they did find a couple of people, a ticket agent and a deckhand on the ferry, who thought they remembered Anna going out to the island. And there is a jitney that still runs occasionally and a driver said he also thought he saw her on it. But no one remembers where she went, and no one remembers her leaving. But the chief said that didn’t mean she didn’t leave, just that no one saw her.”

The three of us were sitting in a coffee shop on Christopher Street in the West Village. Both she and Sam Dickson were there before me and Alice had quickly brought me up to speed. Sam Dickson had not heard from his sister in a month. He’d tried to contact her repeatedly, to no avail, and finally flew home from his mission in Ecuador.

“She didn’t rent a golf cart?”

“No. I wish she had, because she would have to show identification and use a credit card as a deposit.”

“How did she get from school to Southport?”

“I spoke to her roommates, there are two of them, and they said she was planning to take a bus. I checked with the bus company but she must have used cash, because they didn’t have a record. Same with the ferry ticket agent in Southport. Anna always used cash when she could. We’re not big on using credit cards unless absolutely necessary.”

“Did you check with the bus driver?”

“I didn’t, but the police chief on Bald Head contacted the cops in Southport and they checked it out. One driver said she might have been on his bus to Southport but neither he nor any other driver remembers her leaving. They were shown photos. Again, the police said that didn’t prove much. I even went to the State Police. They put out her picture and went over the same ground the local police did. Same results. They say a lot of girls go missing every year. But without anything to go on, like in a kidnapping with a ransom demand, or …”  Sam’s eyes welled up. “… a body, there is not much they can do.”

Alice reached across the table and patted his arm.

“I know this is hard,” she said.

I finished my coffee and signaled the waitress for more. She came over and filled all our cups.

“It’s only Anna and me. Our folks were killed in a small plane crash coming back from a church conference in Idaho. My dad was a minister. I was in college and Anna was in high school. We received an insurance settlement and that kept us going in school. I paid off the mortgage on our house. I mean, we have some family, but they are spread all over the country, and I was old enough to take care of Anna and we wanted to stay together. I’ve contacted everyone I could think of, family and friends, but no one has heard anything from Anna. They’re all concerned, of course, but what can they do?”

Sam Dickson had sandy hair and a ruddy complexion that I attributed to a lot of outdoor work at his mission. I could see some of Anna in his features. Like with her, I could sense an innate decency and solidness in him. I was taken with him, much as I was taken with his sister. I knew what was coming next, so I got right to it.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You’re a private eye, right? You find people.”

“He’s one of the best at that,” Alice said.

I wish she hadn’t. I don’t like to get people’s hopes up. It was true, of course. I did seem to have the knack. I’d once located a man in witness protection. And not by accident either, like Tony Soprano when he bumped into — and bumped off — a mob snitch during a college visit with his daughter. I tracked my man down. Or, rather, I tracked his still-warm corpse down. Maks Kalugin, who was tracking me, had stopped by first. Still, it was the pinnacle of my gumshoe career and I got a lot of credit for my accomplishment, from both sides of the law, and word seeped out that I was a modern Natty Bumpo. Truth be told, I didn’t mind the seeping. It was good for business. Usually paying business, which I suspected was not the case in this instance.

“I don’t have much money,” Sam Dickson said. “The insurance is gone. I get by on my church salary, some of which I send to Anna. She works part-time as a tutor.”

I was right.

“That won’t be a problem,” Alice said.

I was really right.

“Listen, Sam, I’ll do what I can. I can go over all the ground the police did. I’ll start at her school. I’ll need the names of her roommates. The people she works for as a tutor. I’ll need Anna’s contact information and anything else you can think of. Her photo, of course. I’ll make copies, so I can show them around.”

He was shaking his head.

“Mr. Rhode. I’ll give you a photo and whatever else I have, but I don’t think you have to do all that. I’m sure Anna went to Bald Head and never left. Something happened to her there. Something to do with Ashleigh Harper.”

“Ashleigh Harper?”

“Show him the letter,” Alice said, gently.

He reached into his jacket pocket and brought it out.

CHAPTER 11 - THE LETTER

I started reading:

Dearest Sam,

I loved your last letter. Emails are fine, but they can’t replace “snail mail”! I’ve kept all of Mom and Dad’s letters, and yours, of course. Your handwriting is still atrocious, which suits me fine, since I’m sure I’m the only person on the planet who can decipher it! That makes your missives all the more precious. It’s like having a secret correspondent! You would have fit in well with the Navajo code talkers who worked with the Marines in World War II.

I smiled. Anna’s beautiful script, on the other hand, was easy to read.

Enough teasing, at least about your penmanship. You keep mentioning a girl you are working with. Marisa. Can I infer anything? Say, a blossoming romance? If so, she must be a heck of a nice girl. Can you send a photo? Or is it too soon for that sort of thing? If not, please be serious. The last time I bugged you about your love life, and asked for a picture, you sent me a picture of a warthog! Very funny.

Speaking of Mom and Dad, you must know how proud they would be of the fine work you are doing. They left us too soon, but I just know they are smiling down on you. I can’t wait until I am able to join you at the mission. I have been accepted at Alliance College, the Christian school just north of Manhattan, and will be able to do my graduate work at their campus in Greenwich Village. I start in January. I have a scholarship that will pay for tuition and books and will start looking for a place to live very soon. I know Manhattan is expensive, but the Registrar told me that she can help me find roommates. I also met a wonderful woman who teaches at Barnard and she told me to call her if I needed help getting settled in the Big Apple. Her name is Dr. Alice Watts and she and the man she is seeing took me under their wing when I went to Bald Head Island to interview Ashleigh Harper for my dissertation. I know I emailed you about that! The man is a private investigator in New York and pulled some strings to get me into the Harper luncheon. Then they insisted that I stay with them rather than going back to school at night by bus. They were lifesavers. I cooked dinner for them and made your favorite apple pie. It was a smash, if I do say so myself. I bet your mouth is watering right now!

I did meet the alleged Harper woman. I’ll explain the “alleged” in a moment. But I did not get an interview. I did get an email address from the lady who is the woman’s lawyer and handles her affairs. She told me to send any further questions I had to her. I probably wouldn’t have even gotten that far except Mr. Rhode, he’s the private eye, all but said he’d barge into their house. Got to love New York chutzpah! (I hope I spelled that right; sometimes I do miss email spellcheck.)

Anyway, I sent a bunch of questions, but all I got back was boilerplate replies. They were pretty worthless for my needs, so I took the bull by the horns and went back to Bald Head. In the off-season and pretty chilly and I was able to get an inexpensive room at a local motel right on the island and then “staked out” the house. It was easy. It’s kind of isolated but no one bothers a girl (bundled up!) lying on the beach and I waited until I was sure the old woman was alone and then walked to the back of the house and yelled up to her where she was sitting on the deck. Actually, she was not sitting. She was leaning over the rail smoking a cigarette! I thought that a bit odd, but we all have our little secret vices, don’t we?

I’m afraid I told a little white lie and said that Alexandra Nidus — that’s the lawyer — told me I could ask questions. Well, she did, in a matter of speaking, just not exactly in the way I implied. It was just a little white lie.

The old woman seemed a bit nervous, but she invited me up! I think she was lonely. I thought she might have been slightly tipsy, as well. I went in through the sliders in the back. No one else was there. The first thing I noticed in the living room was a big birdcage! With a parrot! That was when I first sensed that something was not right. I couldn’t imagine Ashleigh Harper ever countenancing locking up a bird.

I went up to the third floor. The old woman was indeed tipsy; she was drinking Scotch! Out of a paper bathroom cup. Said it was for medicinal purposes. Doctor’s orders. She offered me some. You know me. I never touch hard liquor, but I wanted to keep her talking so I accepted a cup. Just between you, me and the lamppost, it wasn’t half bad. Don’t worry. I didn’t even finish my first one.

We got to talking and then that’s when things got weird. Very weird.

Now, for all those ‘alleged’. As incredible as it sounds, I don’t think the woman I spoke to is Ashleigh Harper! I seemed to know more about Turtle Dove through my research than she did as the author. I mean, she got most of the generalities right, but when it came to specifics, like identifying who she modeled some characters after, she became very vague. I’ve read old biographies of Harper, and she readily admitted that she drew on real people for her inspiration. But there is more. For example, I asked her how long she had been interested in ornithology. She replied that she never got involved with cults. I think she got it confused with Scientology! I was going to make an issue out of it but then I thought perhaps she was having a ‘senior moment’ or something. Although it would be a heck of a senior moment. Harper mentions the study of birds many times in Turtle Dove, and even uses the scientific name several times.

Then I brought up bird watching. Harper is a famous bird watcher. She even dedicated her book to Ludlow Griscom, Roger Tory Peterson and Neltje Blanchan, pioneers of bird watching on the eastern seaboard. But when I spoke to her, she did not have a clue who they were!

I was beginning to think I was nuts, and she was so nervous she lit up another cigarette. That’s when it hit me. Not that she smoked. She grew up in an age when everyone did. But she held the cigarette in her right hand and flicked her ashes in a cup the same way. That’s hard to do if you are left-handed. And Ashleigh Harper is left-handed! That’s in the bios. She was a bit of a tomboy and was a left-handed pitcher on her high-school girls’ softball team. I went back and looked it up. Then I remembered that she signed my book with her right hand.

It was all too much. I was about to say something when I heard the front door open, and then some people talking. I’m pretty sure it was the lady lawyer and the security guard who gave me such a hard time at the luncheon. I thought the old lady was going to have a stroke, she got so scared, and I wasn’t supposed to be there, so I went out the back way and ran up the beach.

If there is a rational explanation for all this, I haven’t been able to figure it out. I hope I’m wrong, but the fact is that Harper’s latest book, The Lighthouse Chronicles, is terrible, at least when compared to Turtle Dove. I say that reluctantly, because I’ve always revered Harper. But it’s shallow, with cardboard characters and no social relevance. I think there is something funny going on. In good conscience I can’t finish my thesis on Turtle Dove and Harper without at least getting an explanation. So, I’m heading back to Bald Head Island. This time I want to speak to ‘Harper’ in the presence of her lawyer. I certainly don’t want to get myself sued by making false accusations.

I’ll let you know what they say when I get back to school.

Love,

Your wonderful, charming, gorgeous and modest sister,

Anna Banana

PS: Please take care of yourself, Sam Sam!

When I looked up, Sam Dickson said, “Those are our pet names for each other.”

I glanced at Alice. I knew what she was thinking.

This probably was not going to end up well for the Dicksons.

CHAPTER 12 - FINGERPRINTS

“I have to go back to Ecuador,” Sam Dickson said. “My plane leaves in a couple of hours.”

I knew he was miserable about that. But he had no choice, he explained. It was a small mission, for wayward children, and his church was counting on him. His trip back to the United States was a small tragedy for the kids he worked with.

“Did you find anything among Anna’s possessions at school relating to Harper?”

“You mean like the book copy Harper signed? That was one of the first things I looked for. She probably took it with her when she went back to Bald Head.”

“I have my copy,” Alice said.

And I had mine, someplace.

“That should be enough,” I thought out loud.

“Enough for what, Mr. Rhode?”

“Never mind, Sam. Look. You get on a plane. I’ll stay in touch. I won’t tell you not to worry, but I’ll do my best to find Anna.”

“Are you a religious man, sir?”

“I think ‘spiritual’ might best sum me up. Is that good enough?”

“Of course. I just meant that I will pray for you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I meant it. Something told me I was going to need every edge I could get.

***

“What do you think happened to Anna?”

We were having an early dinner at the Red Lion on Bleeker Street.

“My money is on dead,” I said, biting into my roasted turkey sandwich. I looked at Alice. “And so is yours.”

She nodded, sadly. She had barely touched her vegetarian quiche, being content to nibble on the salad that came with it. The Red Lion is noted for its burgers and beers, and I was pleasantly surprised that we weren’t asked to leave when we ordered our food and a bottle of white wine. But after my Grizzly Burger lunch splurge, I was taking it easy. Alice is no vegan, but I could tell she had little appetite after our conversation with Sam Dickson. She was really helping me out with the wine, however, another sign of her distress.

“What are you going to do?”

“I agree with Sam that whatever happened to his sister probably happened on Bald Head. I’ll start there. If I come up empty I’ll go to Fayetteville and track her movements from when she left school.”

“Why?”

There’s a chance the police and Sam missed something along the way. It happens, more than you think. Investigating is different than you see on those cop shows on TV, where all you have to do is call up cell towers, or use facial recognition, DNA and fingerprints on a computer terminal linked to some database with a funny name. I suppose it’s necessary for TV, otherwise each show would run about a month, rather than an hour.”

The Red Lion was beginning to fill up with a date crowd. The jazz band would go on in an hour. Something was bothering me.

“Fingerprints!”

Alice looked at me.

“What about them?”

“I wanted to compare the signatures on the books Harper signed for you and me. I almost forgot about fingerprints.”

“Wouldn’t the signatures be the same?” She frowned. “You’re thinking they are forged. But then they’d still be the same.”

“Maybe. But it’s not easy to fake a signature. It takes effort, and maybe there would be a variation. Didn’t the woman cross out something on yours?”

“Yes.”

“It may mean nothing. But I’m going to have someone look at both signatures. And I need both books to check her fingerprints.”

“Why both books? Wouldn’t one set of prints be enough?”

“Did you handle your copy?”

“Some?”

“Anyone else?’

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Same with my copy. I’ve hardly touched mine and no one else has. I threw it on a table. It’s still there. So, after your prints and mine are eliminated, as well as any odd ones, two sets of similar prints should be Harper’s.”

“But how will you know they are hers? I doubt if she is in any database.”

“The real Harper’s probably wouldn’t be. But I’m counting on them not being hers. And if she is an impostor, she may have a record and be in the system.”

“So, a database with a funny name may come in handy.”

“I bet you were dying to say that.”

We walked back to Alice’s apartment to collect her copy of The Lighthouse Chronicles.

“It really is crappy,” Alice said as I slid it gingerly into a plastic bag in her kitchen. “Anna was right. I had a hard time finishing it.”

“I thought you read it on Bald Head.”

“I started it, but you kept distracting me with your sexual demands.”

“My sexual demands! Hell, I think I missed a couple of meals because you are so insatiable. And I don’t miss many meals.”

I took her in my arms and kissed her.

“You mean to tell me that if the book was any good, you wouldn’t put out?”

“You’re lucky it wasn’t Gone With the Wind.”

“I’m reading a good book now,” I said, pressing her closer.

“And what might that be,” she said huskily.

“The Quickie and the Dead.”

Alice laughed.

“Right here? On my kitchen counter? Who does that?”

“You just haven’t watched enough cop shows,” I said.

It wasn’t the most-comfortable lovemaking we’d enjoyed, until the very end, when it got very enjoyable and neither of us gave a damn. After we caught our breath, Alice looked on the floor.

“I had that crock pot forever.”

“I’ll buy you a new one that you will also never use.”

Alice sighed, contentedly.

“Well, at least we found out something I can do well in the kitchen.”

CHAPTER 13 - BAGELS

The next morning I drove to St. George and pulled up in front of the building next to Borough Hall that houses the offices of the Staten Island District Attorney. There has never been enough parking in St. George, which drives local merchants crazy, since most of the few spots available are taken up by cars with “Official” license plates and medallions belonging to cops, court officers, judges, correction officers, Borough Hall staff and the other municipal employees who populate what is the civil nexus of Staten Island. A spanking new courthouse on Center Street and huge private development near the Staten Island Yankee minor-league ballpark has only exacerbated the problem.

I grabbed a parking spot about 20 feet from the front door. The slot was marked “For Official Vehicles Only”, so I reached into my glove box for a medallion that said “Chaplain: United States Marine Corps” and placed it prominently on my dashboard. It was fake, of course. The Navy has chaplains, who serve with the Marines. For added effect, I hung some rosary beads from my rear-view mirror.

I was carrying several bags with me, and they were checked by the security guards inside the entrance. Two of the bags had warm bagels in them, and I lost a couple to the guards, who knew me and let my gun through without a quibble. If anyone ever wants to blow up the building, all they would have to do is make some bagels out of C-4 plastic explosive.

When I walked into the detectives’ room at the Staten Island District Attorney’s office in St. George, I nodded at a couple of the cops I knew and dumped the bags of bagels on an empty desk. Then I went over to where Cormac Levine was sitting reading the comics and pulled up a chair. He looked up from the paper.

“I can’t decide whether I like Classic Peanuts better than Doonesbury,” he said.

“I’m a Tundra fan myself,” I said.

“They all make more sense than the goddamn news.”

“I won’t argue that,” I said, and held up the two plastic bags with a copy of Harper’s alleged latest novel in each. “Since we’re talking literature, I think you might find these more interesting.”

“Jesus,” Cormac said. “I know pornography when I see it. But they must be something else if you won’t even touch them.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Mack. These aren’t porno books. For one thing, I don’t think they are as well-written. I need some forensic help with these.”

“So, we’re talking fingerprints.”

I could hear the bags on the other table being opened.

“And handwriting analysis. You must have some friends in the crime lab in Queens who do that sort of thing.”

“Of course. What do I get out of it?’

“Whatever is left in those bags over there.”

“Bagels.”

“Lots. And all sorts of cream cheeses, some with little green specks in them.”

“Is this a Staten Island crime we’re talking about?”

Cormac Levine and I went back a long way. I saved his career once when a child molester fell off a balcony while in his custody. I didn’t actually see it, and I don’t think the pervert was trying to escape. But I swore he was. Since then, we have been involved in all sorts of cases, some even legal, and we’ve stopped worrying about who owes who what. But Cormac, who was once persona non grata in these very offices, is now head of the D.A.’s detective squad and still the best cop I know. So, he wants in on any local crime.

“No. The bad stuff, if it even happened, probably happened in North Carolina. But if I’m right, there may be a juicy publishing scandal you can help me break in Manhattan.”

“A fucking publishing scandal? Have you lost your mind?”

“Just listen.”

“Hold on. I’ll get us some coffee. Go score us some bagels. I want a sesame seed with a smear of the first cream cheese you come across.”

When we were both settled with our breakfast, I told him everything, which took some time. At one point he stopped me to yell over to some other detectives.

“If I find those bags empty later, I’ll shoot someone.”

“I’ve seen you on the range,” one of the cops replied. “I’ll take my chances.”

After I finished my story, Cormac sat back and put his arms behind his head.

“Let me get this straight, if it’s possible. You and Alice went to a glorified sand bar for the wedding of the hooker who almost got you killed once. A hooker I helped you identify by her fingerprints on a Coke can, if memory serves me right. Said call girl is now reformed and married a billionaire, and you gave her away.”

“I think she would prefer the term ‘escort’.”

“I’m sure she would. You know, I’ve heard all about hookers with a heart of gold. But this one is now made of gold. But I digress. So, after the wedding, you went to a book signing by one of the most famous authors in the world, who you think may be an impostor. And a young girl who you helped get an autograph at the book signing is now missing, and you think she has been murdered.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“You did say it, except not as concisely. And your only possible proof may be in these two bags.”

Mack nodded at the books.

“Yeah.” I reached into my pocket for a small envelope and handed it to him. “There’s an index card in there with my prints and Alice’s, labeled with our names. Mine are in the system of course, but it might make it easier for your tech boys.”

Levine laughed.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure your prints are in a lot of systems. But a lot of people may have handled those books.”

“Not as many as you think. They came out of a box with all new books. The outside may have some prints, so forget them. But the first couple of pages, with the autographs, should only have a few. I seem to remember the old lady holding down the pages with her left hand as she signed them with her right hand.”

“Which the real Harper wouldn’t do, if what the girl said in her letter is true. The author being left-handed, and all.”

“It’s nice to see you’ve been paying attention.”

I was kidding, of course. Cormac always paid attention. He could relate our conversation word-for-word if he had to. Now, he turned serious.

“What does Alice think about all this malarkey?”

“She agrees with me.”

“Well, at least there’s that.” Cormac had a high opinion of Alice. “How does she get along with your escort friend?”

“They’re thick as thieves.”

“Of course. If Alice can put up with you, she can put up with anybody. I’m still a little fuzzy on how you and the happy hooker have reconnected.”

Cormac was in Ireland during my last case, which involved Laurene. I hadn’t gotten around to telling him about it yet, since there were several felonies involved. On my part, with lots of help from Maks Kalugin.

“Here’s the short version.”

Without the felonies, it was indeed pretty short, but Cormac still held up his hand half way through the abridged version.

“Stop! I can’t take anymore. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll have someone look at the signatures and try to match the prints.”

“You’ll do what?” a voice behind me said.

I turned and smiled up at District Attorney Mike Sullivan, who had just come out of his office.

“Mack is going to run some prints and stuff for me.”

“What about your laundry?”

“That was last week.”

“I think there is a law, or at least an ordinance, about using city employees for private business,” Sullivan said.

“That’s why I brought in two bags of bagels.”

“You think my office will roll over for some damn bagels?”

“I got a couple extra with poppy seeds for you.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Sullivan said, heading toward the bags. “Levine, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. Help the man out.”

Mack held up one of the book bags.

“This is her picture on the back cover? Does it look like the woman you saw?”

“That photo is 40 years old and in black-and-white. Sure, it bears a vague resemblance to my Harper, but that’s to be expected. If someone is running a scam, they’d look for a substitute with similar features.”

“Yeah. I guess an albino dwarf might raise questions. You gonna go to the publisher with your theory?”

“God, no. I need rock-solid proof. I don’t want to get sued.”

“What about the guy who married the reformed, ah, escort? Lowenthal?”

“It’s Lewinsohn. You’re Jewish for Christ’s sake. How can you get the name wrong?”

“I’m not Jewish for Christ’s sake, thank you very much. I’m Jewish for Jehovah’s sake. After listening to your story, I’m not sure I could get my own name right.”

“Well, I can’t go to Barry yet, either. Same reason. If the investment bank gets a whiff of this, they might dump Albatross. That’s the publisher. And if I’m wrong I will have created a lot of damage for no reason. Besides, if there is something fishy and I create a stink, whoever is behind it may go to ground. I want to find out what happened to Anna Dickson first.”

Sullivan walked by, chewing.

“Damned good bagels, Rhode.”

He went into his office.

“Mike’s gonna have little black seeds in his teeth all day,” Cormac said. “He’s giving a luncheon speech to the Urban League later. I wonder if I should tell him.”

I knew Mack wouldn’t.

CHAPTER 14 - LEON

Cormac told me not to expect any answers from the crime lab for at least a week, so I drove to my office to catch up on some work, which much to my surprise and delight, had actually come my way recently.

“As it is,” he said, “I’ll have to tell the lab boys that this is an important cold case, so they don’t get too curious. I haven’t used the Lindbergh baby in a while. Might be a good time.”

When I got to my office, there were three black people in it. Abby Jones was the only one who really belonged there. Abby, whose given name is Habika, originally worked the security desk in the lobby of my building. She had put in 20 years in the Army, retiring as a staff sergeant in the Military Police. When I met her she was a divorced mother working to put a daughter through college. We bonded over a shared love of eggplant parmigiana sandwiches from the Red Lantern tavern in nearby Rosebank. It was soon apparent that she was wasted on a security desk and I hired her part-time. She had half-brothers who were, respectively, a cable technician whose red-tape cutting made me the envy of the building, and Leon, an oft-arrested former gang banger turned minor crime boss who also occasionally came in handy. I soon made her my full-time business manager, and my office suite was now the Pine-Sol center of Staten Island. Her knowledge of criminology and her military contacts had helped me solve several cases, and I paid for her to get her own private investigator’s license.

One of the two black men standing next to Abby’s desk was her brother Leon, the on-again, off-again felon. He had obviously finished his most-recent stretch in jail. I also recognized, but had never met, the other man. It was the Rev. Rufus T. Futterman, pastor of the Fox Hills Baptist Church in one of Staten Island’s more-blighted neighborhoods and a local political firebrand.

“I believe you know my brother, Leon, Alton. And this is Rev. Futterman.”

“Yes, I’ve seen his picture on TV.” I shook both their hands. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

“I told the Reverend that you might be able to help us out,” Leon said.

In fact, I did owe Leon a favor for some help he gave me on a sting I ran against some jewel thieves a while back. But I wondered about the “us”.

“Let’s go into my office,” I said.

As we walked away I spied a brown Amazon box on Abby’s desk, which was cluttered with files, newspaper clippings and computer printouts. Abby is not a clutterer. The printer in the corner was clacking away and spewing out more material. Something was up.

She looked at me and smiled.

“A Geiger counter. I’ll explain later.”

That’s the type of comment that normally demands an immediate explanation, but I trusted Abby, so I kept going and got both my visitors comfortably seated in my office. They declined coffee.

“You look well, Leon,” I said.

“It was a walk in the park,” he replied. “I needed the rest.”

He did look good, and was dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and red polka dot tie. I had never seen him in anything but a track suit. Rev. Futterman was in full minister garb but seemed uncomfortable. The last few times I had seen him on TV, he was wearing a charcoal gray that must have cost two Sunday’s worth of collection plates in his blighted parish. His thick salt-and-pepper hair, though, was, as usual, perfectly coiffed and his nails gleamed.

“Leon tells me that you are a trustworthy man,” Futterman intoned.

He had a deep, sonorous voice that did not need a microphone if one was not available. I looked at Leon, who smiled. Being vouched for by Leon would not get me into Fort Knox or the gumshoe hall of fame.

“I try to be,” I said, tenting my hands somberly.

I realized I looked ridiculous, so I untented.

“And that you are good friends with District Attorney Michael Sullivan.”

“I just gave him some bagels,” I said, helpfully, wondering where this was going.

Futterman looked confused. But before he could respond, I heard a familiar bark. Then the door to my office opened and Maks Kalugin walked in with Gunner straining on a leash. Maks does not knock. He let go of the leash and Gunner launched himself into my lap, and smothered me in wet doggie kisses. Gunner has a tongue the size of Greenland and is a big hound, so I barely managed not to topple over. He was happy to see me, and likewise. But I had guests, and I finally managed to calm him down. Abby came in with a dog biscuit that would choke a Tyrannosaurus and took control of him, leading him out to the reception area. Kalugin and Leon looked at each other, and nodded. Professional nods; it was obvious they knew each other. Without a word, Maks left.

The Reverend looked stunned.

“That was your dog?”

“Yes.”

“He is big.”

“Just out of puppyhood,” I said proudly.

“What kind is he?”

“Byelorussian Ovcharka, also known as an East European Shepherd, a mix of East Siberian Laika dogs and German Shepherds. Red Army war dogs in World War II.”

Leon was looking at me with new-found respect.

“You have Maks Kalugin walking your dog?”

“Long story. Now, what is this all about?”

Futterman regrouped.

“As you undoubtedly know, Staten Island is awash in heroin.”

He was right. It was not news to me. The borough’s heroin epidemic had even been cited in the national news media, including a Page 1 story in The New York Times, which generally ignores Staten Island unless a plane crashes on it.

“Almost 80 percent of new users are white,” Futterman continued, “and now the authorities are treating the scourge more as a disease than a crime. There is talk that prosecutors and judges should not treat users too harshly.”

“And you oppose that?”

“On the contrary. I believe that is the correct approach. But in the past, young black men and women were sent to jail for heroin use, and they threw away the key! I suspect that people of color will still be treated differently from whites. And I believe that many of those already incarcerated should have their cases reviewed.”

I looked at Leon.

“My people don’t go near that crap,” he said.

I knew that was probably true. But I also knew that heroin was so cheap now it probably was not worth the risk to a certain caliber of criminal. But maybe he was sincere. The Rahms stayed away from any drug business, no matter how profitable. It was one of their stricter rules. Early on, a couple of their men had broken that rule until Maks Kalugin showed them the error of their ways, which meant they disappeared without a trace. I shrugged.

“I agree with you, Reverend. And things may be changing. They are beginning to release some drug abusers.”

“But not enough,” he said. “Please understand, I do not care a whit for major drug dealers, be they white or black. They should rot in hell. But I do care for their victims, black and white. I just want everyone treated the same.”

“Again, I have no problem with that. But where do I come in?”

“We are going to the Urban League luncheon at the Hilton today.” That explained Leon’s suit. “Sullivan is the guest speaker. He will probably repeat all the platitudes about race and the rule of law. But I intend to speak to him privately about the matter of heroin and how his office treats drug addicts.”

“Mike Sullivan is a reasonable man. And fair.”

“I believe that a word of support, from you, in a more informal venue, might give added weight to our cause.”

“I’m pretty low on the food chain in Staten Island, Reverend.”

“That is not what Leon tells me.”

I looked at Leon.

“I spend a lot of time in the, ah, court system,” Leon said. “My sources tell me that Sullivan holds you in high regard.”

Leon’s recent stint in jail was voluntary, giving him a rest and an alibi while his subalterns pulled some heists. When he wants to, Leon can talk like a Harvard man. Abby says he was always the smartest of her brothers and ran his tight little crime crew like a small corporation. Arman Rahm, whose operations do not compete with Leon’s, told me basically the same thing.

“That’s nice to hear.”

“They also heard that he owes you big time. Something to do with his wife’s murder.”

I could tell from Leon’s tone that he knew what that “something” was.

“Sullivan doesn’t owe me anything,” I said, coldly.

I had told Mike that many times. But I knew his gratitude would never go away entirely.

“What are you two talking about?” Futterman said.

“Nothing,” Leon said, shortly. “It’s private.”

“But if you know something, maybe we can use it.”

Leon gave him a withering look.

“I don’t know shit, Rufus,” Leon lied, dropping the Harvard pose. “And if I did, I wouldn’t use it against the man. Bring it up again and I’ll shove your black ass into one of the poor boxes in your church.”

He looked at me and I nodded, as Futterman sputtered.

“I’ll do what I can,” I said.

I walked both men out. Leon had to step over a sleeping Gunner to give his sister a hug.

“Stay out of trouble, Leon,” she said.

“I’ve found the Lord,” he said, nodding at Futterman, who was staring at Gunner.

“That’s what I mean,” Abby said.

I knew she was no fan of the good reverend.

At the elevator, I said, “When you speak to Sullivan, check out his teeth.”

They both stared at me and I told them about the bagels.

“If he still has poppy seeds in his teeth, he will appreciate that you told him before he gets up to speak. Can’t hurt.”

“My sister told me you are a strange dude,” Leon said.

CHAPTER 15 - STRONTIUM 90

When I went back to my office, Abby said, “Are you going to do it?”

“Yes. Futterman is a horse’s ass, but he’s right about this.”

“I’m surprised Leon got involved.”

“I think we’ll be hearing a lot about your brother in the future. He’s becoming a player. Now, what’s this about a Geiger counter?”

“In a moment. What’s our rent?”

“Half of what anyone else in this building is paying,” I said.

“Not anymore.”

I was shocked. I thought I had a great relationship with my landlord, the law firm that owned the waterfront building on Bay Street in Stapleton. The firm occupied the ninth, and top, floor, but had given me a nice corner office on the floor below them, at a reasonable rate. I had a great view of the harbor. In return, I did a lot of free work for them, from skip traces to insurance scams. After Superstorm Sandy, I ran into some of the lawyers doing rescue and cleanup work in some of the devastated sections of Staten Island. They weren’t ambulance chasing, so I suggested that their firm offer to represent some of the homeowners pro bono in their battle to get compensation. Pro bono was a term that gave them hives, but I made the point that Staten Islanders tend to have long memories. They bought into my idea and in recent years the firm is awash in new, and paying, business from grateful families and their relatives. And when the Rahms, who drove truckloads of relief supplies to the flooded areas, where many of their businesses were, heard about what the law firm had done, they hired it to handle some of their affairs, both criminal and otherwise. As a result, the firm cut my rent and started paying me for some of the work I do for them. They even give me tickets to Staten Island Yankee games.

“I can’t believe they plan to raise my rent,” I said. “After all I’ve done for them.”

Abby laughed.

“Who said they are gonna raise your rent? After you show them some of this stuff, they’ll probably let us stay here for nothin’. Hell, they may pay us!”

Other than about Red Lantern’s Italian food, I’ve never seen her excited. Until now.

“What are you talking about, Abs?”

“You know that god-awful boring brownfield case you have me researching over by the Bayonne Bridge?”

The law firm upstairs, which thanks to me now gets plenty of environmental cases from homeowners, was fighting a losing battle with some politically-connected developers who had just won approval to build scores of townhouses on land formerly owned by the city. The land in question, on the waterfront of Richmond Terrace, between Nicholas Avenue and John Street, was a so-called brownfield, meaning it was commercially or industrially zoned but presumably undeveloped because of environmental contamination. That usually meant seepage of oil, gasoline or other liquid contaminants. The firm’s clients, who owned homes nearby, were worried.

“By the way,” Abby said, “why do they call them brownfields? I think that’s racist.”

“Get on with it, Abby.”

She waved her arm at the clutter on her desk.

“You asked me to research the history of the site. Turns out that the land was originally owned by the Archer Daniels Heartland Corporation in Michigan. During the Second World War, ADH, as it is now known, maintained a storage site there for the Manhattan Project.”

I moved some papers and sat on the edge of Abby’s desk.

“Are you saying that material that was used in the atom bomb project was stored here on Staten Island? Why would anyone do that?”

“Apparently everyone was afraid Hitler would beat us to the bomb. The United States did not have enough uranium, so we grabbed as much from around the world before the Nazis closed off access to it. The Government stored it all over the Metropolitan area when it arrived by boat. This was before they had even picked out places inland to work on the bomb.”

Abby consulted some notes she had made.

“There was a Belgian named Edgar Sengier who ran the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, a mining operation in the Belgian Congo, where a fantastic lode of uranium ore was discovered. As the Nazis began overrunning Europe, he shipped huge amounts of the ore to America and gave it to the U.S. Army. More than 2,000 drums of raw uranium from the Belgium Congo, weighing 1,200 tons, were brought in by barge to the ADH site. It sat there for a couple of years. In 1942, the stuff was shipped out for refinement for use in the making of atomic bombs. The warehouse where it was kept was destroyed in the mid-1940’s.”

“And you think the site is radioactive?”

“That’s for you to find out, boss. But did you ever hear of a nuclear site that wasn’t radioactive. Like for a million years?”

She reached into the Amazon box and hauled out the surprisingly small instrument.

“What we have here,” Abby said, reading the label, “is a GMD-300F-Plus Digital Nuclear Beta Gamma X ray Dosimeter. AKA, a Geiger counter.”

“Good Lord, what did it cost?”

“A hundred bucks and free shipping.”

***

Two hours later, after I familiarized myself with the Geiger counter, I drove up to the front gate of the brownfield. In addition to the Geiger, I brought along a clipboard and a hard hat, which are usually all that is necessary to get into any construction site. I thought it was overkill. I did not even expect a guard.

There was a guard. He heaved himself out of a car when I parked. He was a fat guy in an ill-fitting brown uniform with underarm sweat stains and an attitude.

“Hold it right there, pal,” he said. “This is private property.”

I reached back in my car for my hard hat and clipboard. The hat was red. If I had the time, I would have stenciled a skull and crossbones on it, but I hadn’t been expecting a problem. The red usually did the trick.

“Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” I said. “Division of Brownfield Inspections. We called ahead.”

He walked up to me.

“I don’t know nothin’ about no inspection. Buzz off.”

He was acting pretty tough for a security guard. I looked at the bill of his cap. A logo said “F.B.S.”

“You’re from Five-Boro Security?”

“Yeah.”

I smiled. It was a mob-controlled company based in Brooklyn. The Carlucci crime family on Staten Island had once been a silent partner in F.B.S., and used it to identify houses that contained expensive jewelry that could be burgled, using security codes F.B.S. conveniently provided. The Carluccis were no longer a factor on Staten Island, but if F.B.S. was handling the security for the development of this brownfield, it explained why it was approved. I held up the Geiger counter.

“I have to check for radioactivity. We have reports that someone dumped some old X-ray machines in there.” I didn’t have the energy to explain the Manhattan Project to this dodo. “If that land is dug up, the dust and debris could affect nearby neighborhoods.”

The guard looked at some of the nearby homes. It was a poor neighborhood. Most of its residents were black and Hispanic.

“You mean the spics and the spooks might start glowing in the dark?” He laughed. “Who gives a fuck?”

I smiled at him, reasonably.

“Aren’t you worried that you might be contaminated?”

“I’ve never been in there,” he said, pointing into the lot. “Stinks of garbage. Animals who live around here must throw it over the fence.”

The guy’s own body odor did not making standing on our side of the fence very pleasant, but I let it go.

“You don’t mind if I check you out, do you?”

“What the fuck for?”

“A lot of stuff can drift on the wind. What’s the harm? It’s for your own good.”

While the thug hesitated, I turned on the Geiger counter and set it to register even the slightest hint of radiation.

“Sure. Have a blast, pal.”

I ran the wand up and down his body. It started clacking like crazy, probably from the luminescence from my wristwatch. But it sounded like I was at ground zero in Nagasaki.

I said “Jesus!” and stepped away from him. Predictably, he turned white.

“What’s the matter?” he stammered.

“Probably nothing,” I said, trying to sound unconvincing. “But I think you should go home and put all your clothes in the washing machine. Then take a hot shower.”

That was probably something he should do, anyway.

“What about my boots?”

“Put them in the washing machine, too.”

“That will be enough?”

“Do two cycles, just to be sure.”

“And shower?”

“Only one shower, but use a lot of shampoo. Strontium 90 tends to stick to the scalp.”

“Stront … is that bad?”

“It has been known to cause brain cataracts.”

“So if I do all this, I’ll be OK?”

He could hardly get the words out.

“Probably. But just to be sure, get a Geiger counter.”

“Where can I get one?”

“Well, this one is top-of-the-line, only used by the government. Probably cost a couple of grand. But you can get a civilian version on Amazon for about a hundred bucks. Go over everything in your house and car with it. Also any place in which you’ve spent a lot of time. The instructions will tell you what a normal reading is.”

The man looked incapable of moving.

“I live in Brooklyn,” he stammered. “Do you think I can make it?”

““Every second counts,” I said, helpfully. But I was having fun. “Do you have E-Z Pass?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t use those lanes. Sometimes radiation sets off the alarms.”

“OK, pal. Thanks.”

He ran to his car and a moment later shot off down the road, spewing gravel behind him. I wondered what his buddies at the local Italian-American social club would say when he walked in with a Geiger counter. I was still smiling when I broke the lock on the gate.

***

“Are you sure the land is radioactive?”

Abby and I were sitting in the boardroom of the law office on the top floor of my building. The questioner was Richard Mundy, the firm’s senior partner. A few other lawyers were arrayed around the table. I could sense their excitement.

“I walked most of the property,” I said. “My gizmo started clacking almost immediately. It was so loud I had to check to make sure I had reduced the setting after I got rid of the guard. I found the footprint of the old warehouse easily enough, and the counter went off the charts. Needless to say, I left.”

The lawyers looked at me with alarm.

“Don’t worry. I stopped by Wagner College on the way here and spoke to one of the professors in the physics department. He said the readings were high, but not dangerous for a short-term exposure. Long-term, he said, was another matter.”

“Was he curious about where the readings came from?” Mundy asked.

“Sure. But I told him I was working on a case in Long Island involving some empty lots near the old nuclear power plant in East Shoreham. Then he said something interesting. He wanted to know if my readings were ground level, which they were. He said if someone dug down the readings would probably be much higher from water seepage and the like.”

“Like if a developer built townhouses,” Mundy said.

“Be like living inside an MRI machine full-time,” I said. “But I haven’t gotten to the good part, yet.”

“Jesus,” one of the other lawyers said.

“Thanks to Abby, here, who researched the history of the site, it was originally owned by the Archer Daniels Heartland Corporation.”

“Deep pockets,” one of the lawyers murmured.

“So, I don’t think you will have any problem stopping the development. And the guard, bless his soul, complained that kids from the neighborhood often went into the lot.”

“My God,” Mundy said.

“Personally, I hope the kids didn’t pick up too much radiation just walking through.” I paused. “But that’s for a jury to decide.”

“We want to see all your research, Abby,” Mundy said.

“I’ll put it all together for you,” she said.

“It might be helpful if you led us through it.” Mundy looked at me. “We might have to borrow her for a while.”

“Is this a good time to talk about our rent?” Abby said, sweetly.

CHAPTER 16 - PESTO

Cormac called me Thursday morning.

“Heard back from the crime lab.”

“That was fast.”

“My forensic pal didn’t buy the Lindbergh baby story, but he does want me to buy him lunch. Which means you will buy us both lunch. And I don’t mean Ray’s Pizza. I’m meeting him in Howard Beach at 12:30. Place called Bruno’s. Says it’s his favorite restaurant in the city. Al rates his own Zip code, so the portions must be huge.”

“You’re no slacker at the feed trough, Mack.”

“He puts me to shame.”

This, I had to see.

“Pick you up at 11:30.”

After I hung up, I Googled Bruno’s. I like to know what I’m in for. TripAdvisor ranked it No. 1 out of 2,832 restaurants in Queens. Sometimes my profession has unexpected perks, even when I’m paying the tab.

Traffic on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was heavy and got worse when we hit the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. After a few miles of stop and go, mainly stop, Mack put a flashing light on the roof and hit the siren. It is not wise to stand between Cormac Levine and his lunch. It was a bit bumpy when we had to drive on the shoulder or around the accidents that were causing the delays, but we arrived at Bruno’s on Cross Bay Blvd., across from a small inlet and boat basin with 10 minutes to spare.

Mack spotted his forensics buddy almost immediately. Even in a restaurant crowded with oversize patrons, some of whom looked like extras on the Sopranos, the man stood out. Or, rather, sat out. He was already eating. As we got closer, I saw he had a huge platter of fried calamari in front of him. There were two carafes of red wine on the table. One was half full. I was pretty sure it didn’t start out that way. On the chair next to him was a small shopping bag, under which was a manila folder.

“Alton, this Detective Al Pesto.”

My hand disappeared into his and I momentarily braced myself, but his grip was gentle.

“Nice to meet you at last, Rhode. Mac tells me nice things about you.”

Pesto was huge, with a fleshy face dominated by a huge nose, but surprisingly he did not look obese. He had a full head of hair and was tall as well as broad. I didn’t see him running in the New York Marathon, but I wouldn’t want him to corner me in an alley.

“You like calamari? Best in the city. I’ll order you guys some. And help yourself to the wine. It’s the house Chianti, but pretty good.”

I had assumed the platter was for the table. Mack went for the calamari. I settled for a green salad. I knew what was coming. I poured some wine for Mack and myself.

Pesto reached for the envelope on the chair next to him and handed it to me.

“You probably should look at this before the food comes and we get red sauce all over it. I’ll talk while you read. The books are in the shopping bag. ”

I started leafing through the material.

“The signatures are forgeries. Not even close. As you surmised, they were written by someone who is right-handed. They each differ in minute ways, as if the writer was trying too hard to get it right, or, I should say, correct. Because she got it right, when it should have been left, right?”

I looked at Pesto.

“That’s a handwriting joke,” he said, with a mouth full of fried squid.

“First one I’ve heard,” I said.

And, hopefully, the last.

“The dunce even crossed out part of one signature, and I think I know why. She started to write her own first name by mistake!”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll get to that. Meanwhile, one of our interns from Pace dug up an old newspaper photo of Ashleigh Harper at some function signing her first books about 40 years ago. Left-handed.”

“Sometimes photos in newspapers are reversed,” Mack said. “I read someplace that in the movie Pride of the Yankees they reversed the film to show right-handed Gary Cooper batting left-handed, like the real Lou Gehrig.”

Pesto smiled at him.

“Gee, Levine, why didn’t I think of that? Me having a Doctorate in Forensic Science and all. Of course, if the photo was reversed, we would have had a hard time reading the titles of the books they had stacked up on the table. But we didn’t.”

“Sorry,” Mack said.

“And for the record, the Gary Cooper story is bunk. He wasn’t much of an athlete, but they taught him to swing lefty. Next time you see the movie, check out his fly.”

“His fly? Like a fly ball?”

“No. On his pants. Some scientist compared the fly of Cooper and Gehrig’s road uniform pants. They lay the same way, left flap over right, proving that the film wasn’t flipped.”

“We have scientists who look at Gary Cooper’s zipper?”

“Is there a chance” I interrupted, before things got out of hand, “that as the woman got older she changed the way she writes? Switched from left to right? Phil Mickelson, the golfer, is right-handed, but plays lefty. I could give you plenty of other examples. And what about people who are ambidextrous? Maybe something happened to her left arm and it’s just easier to use the other hand.”

“Maybe she has Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” Mack offered, hopefully.

We both looked at him after that one.

“Anything is possible,” Pesto said, “including the possibility that I will starve to death before we get our lunch.” His calamari plate was empty. In fact, it looked as if it had been washed. “But you mentioned that this old broad smoked right-handed, too. And no one has mentioned that she had a bum left wing. I hear you are a pretty good detective, Rhode. Did you happen to notice that?”

“Her left arm looked perfectly fine. She held the book in her left when she signed. Even handed it back from that hand, as I remember.”

Our waiter finally appeared with our appetizer and salad. Pesto said he wanted to order. He did and the waiter started to leave.

“Hey! Aren’t you going to ask these gentlemen what they want?”

The man looked startled, and then took our orders.

“And bring more wine and bread,” Pesto said.

The stunned waiter left.

“He’s new,” Pesto said. “The regulars know I have a big appetite.”

There was a black-and-white mug shot of a nice-looking woman in the folder. I picked it up and read the name.

“Bessie Magruder?”

“Yeah,” Pesto said. “We eliminated the prints from you and your girlfriend. There were matching prints from two other people on both books. They aren’t in the system. Probably belong to whoever took the books out of the box. But two sets did match and were in the system. Bessie Magruder. Arrested years ago in Manhattan. Minor stuff, mostly. It’s all in there. Shoplifting, solicitation, passing bum checks. Gave her occupation as an actress and, of course, waitress. Notice the first three letters of her first name?”

“They look like the three letters crossed out in the book.”

“Yeah. Poor Bessie slipped up. It must be hard to sign someone else’s name when you don’t expect to. I take it you took her by surprise.”

“We did.”

There was a vague resemblance, but the photo was of a much-younger woman. I looked at Pesto.

“You have sketch artists and computer people who can ‘age’ a photo, don’t you?”

“Of course. But let’s wait on that. Mac and I have used up most of our favors. But don’t despair. If you want to see what Bessie Magruder looks like now, you might also want to see if she’s done any recent theater work. Once an actress always an actress. And if someone is running a scam, they probably didn’t just find her on the street or waiting tables.”

Detective Pesto was certainly earning his lunch. Which came shortly. In waves. Two hours later I paid the tab, which looked like I’d hosted a retirement party. I lost count after the Spaghetti Bolognese, Veal Parmigiana, Chicken Capricciosa, Filetto di Pomodoro and Sausage with Peppers. I kept a copy of the bill to frame.

***

“I never thought I’d find anyone who could eat you under the table, Mack,” I said, as we got to the car. “That was impressive.”

“Al could out-eat the New England Patriots. I can’t believe he skipped dessert. He’s probably trying to lose weight.”

“Even his name is connected to food.”

“Hell of a forensic scientist, though.”

“That’s a fact,” I said. “And he gave me a great idea.”

I called Wayne Miller’s cell phone and told him what Pesto said about the possibility that Bessie Magruder might have acted recently in New York. Wayne said he was in Manhattan, directing an off-Broadway play, but had some free time to look her up. Could I meet him at his theater?

“Feel like driving me into Manhattan, Mack?”

“After that lunch, I’d drive you to Saskatchewan.”

CHAPTER 17 - TALENT

Mack dropped me off at the Classic Stage Company Theater on East 13th Street in the Village for my meeting with Wayne.

“I seem to be spending a lot of time in Greenwich Village these days,” I commented.

“Doesn’t Alice live near here?”

“Yes.”

“So, what are you complaining about?”

“It was just an observation.”

“Then go observe something else. I have to get back to the office. I want to beat the traffic.”

We fist bumped.

“Thanks, Mack.”

The poster on the wall outside the theater advertised Peer Gynt, identifying it as Ibsen’s play about “a childhood renegade, outcast, adventurer, industrialist and provocateur who searches for a life that will live up to his impossible and irrepressible expectations”. It sounded like half the people running for President.

When I walked into the theater, Wayne was standing below the stage talking to some actors. I took a seat until he finished and saw me.

“Let’s go into my office,” he said.

I’ve known Wayne Miller a long time. He’s a fine actor who has run small theater groups on Staten Island and recently graduated to the bigger leagues. Everyone expects him to eventually direct a Broadway show. Wayne lives near me and I’ve often imposed on him to come by my house and feed Scar when he was between squirrels and the occasional opossum who was not faking it.

“I appreciate your help on this, Wayne,” I said when we sat in his office.

“Glad to help you out on anything that doesn’t include taking care of that thing you call a cat. He belongs on the Serengeti.”

“I’ve made other arrangements. Kid on the block. I think he’s training to be a lion tamer.”

“And Gunner puts up with Scar?”

“I think it’s the other way around. How’s the play going?”

“It’s a challenge. Ibsen is considered the most important playwright since Shakespeare. So, the bar is set pretty high. And Peer Gynt is the most surreal of his plays. Their weather being what it is, Norwegians have a lot of time to sit around and think. But it’s coming together. I have a great group of actors, although I just lost one of them to a broken leg.”

“I thought that was good luck.”

“Not when we open in three weeks. It’s a small part but the girl was stunning, which is what the part needs, as politically incorrect as that sounds. Oh, well, we’ll manage. And speaking of actors, I haven’t been able to locate your Bessie Magruder. I’ve made a few calls but you will have to take it from here.”

Wayne passed me a sheet of paper.

“These are the major talent agencies in the city. I’ve crossed out the ones I’ve called.”

I looked at the printout. There were 15 agencies, of which five were crossed off.

“There is no Actors Equity database?”

“No. That would be too easy. The industry is still fragmented. The union does not keep a data base of current photos, but casting agents do.” He pointed at the list in my hand. “Those are only the ones in Manhattan. There are a few in Brooklyn. But you should start with these names. The odds are that if she worked within the last few years, she’s represented by one of those, and they may have a current photo. If you strike out, one of them can probably get you a list of agents outside Manhattan. Then, of course, there are a slew of casting agents in Hollywood. But you have to start somewhere. Has she been murdered, or something?”

“I hope not. But she may be involved in something pretty screwy.”

“Well, good hunting. I have to get back to work, but you can use this office if you like to make your calls. And you can use my name if you have to. How’s Alice? She lives near here, doesn’t she?”

“On Christopher.”

“Great. Just call ahead and I’ll leave two tickets for you at the box office when we open.”

“The last play you invited me involved a bunch of actors sitting on caskets screaming at the audience.”

Wayne laughed.

“I remember that piece of avant-garde crap. I was forced to put it on at Snug Harbor to keep our cultural grant. I believe you dubbed it ‘Musical Coffins’ because every now and then they jumped up and switched places.”

“I called it a lot of things. I assumed it was payback for Scar.”

“You also insulted the playwright.”

“He insulted me and everyone else in the audience.”

“No argument, here. Well, this is Ibsen. Alice will love it. She’ll see a lot of you in it.”

After Wayne left, I took the list and started calling. The ten names not crossed off were:  Ameristage, Borden Casting, Comer Casting, Donna DeSoto Casting, Lori Westside Casting Inc., Sylvia Geneck & Associates, Herman Lipton Casting, Saul Kaufman, McGonnigle Casting, Ltd. and Barbara Polito Casting.

I hate lists. I never know where to start. On the assumption that nothing is ever easy and I probably wouldn’t get a hit, if I did, until near the end of the list, I started at the end, with the Barbara Polito agency. Most of the agents, or their assistants, were helpful. After all, their job is to get work for their clients. And the couple who were reticent to confirm Magruder’s name over the phone reacted to Wayne Miller’s name. My start-at-the-end strategy had a predictable result. Ameristage, the first name on Wayne’s list, and the last one I called, represented Bessie.

“Do you have a current photo of Ms. Magruder?”

“I’m sure we do,” the assistant, whose name was Tanya, said. “Hold on, please.”

I held on. I was annoyed about all the wasted calls, but consoled myself with the thought that when all was said and done, I probably was pretty lucky.

“We have a photo,” Tanya said when she came back on the line. “But it is almost two years old. Ms. Magruder should really get us a more recent shot. I’ll have to call her.”

“Hold that thought,” I said. “Don’t call anyone. I’ll be right over.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

***

The Ameristage agency was on West 38th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Close enough to Broadway to get the heart of every star-struck ingénue pumping a little faster.

Tanya turned out to be a tall willowy receptionist, with flowing brown hair and gray eyes. She dazzled me with a smile of perfect teeth.

“I hope the folks here at Ameristage are representing you,” I said.

I knew it sounded like a pickup line, and I’m spoken for, but I meant it. She was a knockout.

“They are. I am an actress. This job is better than being a waitress, although I have done that. The agency represents me, and has my most recent photo. Unlike Ms. Magruder. You are the gentlemen I spoke to on the phone, no? Mr. Rhode.”

Tanya had a slight and sexy Russian accent. New York seems to be overrun by pretty Russian girls, which is not a bad thing. She looked a lot like the lady detective in the TV show, Castle. Some people say that Russian women don't age well. Maks Kalugin insists that once they hit 50 or so, they start “spreading out like a pregnant yak". His words, not mine. Maybe he’s right, but I bet a lot of Russian men die happy before that happens.

“I’d like to see the most recent photo of Bessie Magruder, and get her contact information.”

“Why?”

It was a reasonable question. I thought about trying to bamboozle her, but she did not look like the type who could be bamboozled. I’ve had some experience with Russian actresses, and it usually works the other way around.

I took out my license.

“I’m working on a missing-persons case, a young girl, and Magruder may be involved. If she is, she may also be in danger.”

I didn’t know that. But I also didn’t not know it.

“You probably should come back, when the Brubackers are here. They own the agency. They do not like to give out client information.”

“When will they be back?”

“I don’t know. They had meetings. They may not return at all this afternoon. You could check tomorrow.”

I hate to leave a hot lead hanging. I thought about turning on my charm, but I had a better idea.

“Do you know who Wayne Miller is?”

“No.”

“Google him and Peer Gynt.”

She tapped her computer.

“You know him?” she said, somewhat impressed.

“Hold on.”

I called Wayne on my cell.

“Yes.”

“Did you find someone for the broken leg yet?”

“Jesus, Alton, you left here 15 minutes ago. I haven’t even made a call yet. I would have earlier, but I was calling around for you, remember.”

“Don’t use that tone with me, Miller, or I’ll put Scar in your mailbox.”

“What do you want now?” he said, resignedly.

“I’m sending someone over I want you to meet. She’ll be there within the hour, after she does something for me. You can thank me later.”

“Or not.”

He hung up.

“Let me see your phone,” Tanya said.

“Why?”

“To make sure who you called.”

I liked this Russian girl. She thought like me. After confirming that I had indeed called Wayne, she said, “wait here” and walked into a back office. A moment later she came back with a folder and went to a copier. After she was finished, she handed me several copies, with biographical information and contact numbers.

And the most-recent photo of Bessie Magruder.

I compared it to the original in the file. It was good enough. Both versions looked an awful lot like “Ashleigh Harper”.

Tanya handed me a folder to put my copies in and started writing a note.

“For the Brubakers, in case they come back,” she explained, not looking up.

“Will they be mad?”

“No. They are nice. And they are my agents, after all. They want me to find work. I won’t cut them out.”

She put on her jacket.

“Where is this Wayne Miller?”

I told her.

“I can’t make any promises on his behalf,” I said.

“No one is asking you to. I know how the game is played.” She softened. “I appreciate the contact. Even with the blackmail.”

“It’s how my game is played, sometimes, Tanya.”

She walked up to me.

“I have to run to the ladies’ room, to make myself even prettier.”

“You get any more beautiful, kid, and Wayne will have a heart attack.”

She leaned in and kissed me. On the lips. And lingered. Then she went out the door. Wowie.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she would be in Peer Gynt in three weeks.

CHAPTER 18 - UNEXPECTED PAYDAY

I was still trying to shake off the effects of Tanya’s kiss when I walked into a nearby coffee shop. It was pretty empty and I did not feel guilty about sitting at a small booth and just ordering coffee. After the lunch I had with Cormac, I was not planning on eating until Thanksgiving.

I went through the Bessie Magruder information. She was born Bess Anne Magruder in Flynt, Michigan, and was now 78. Bessie was her stage name and her list of acting credits was impressive, although I noted that most of her gigs were in regional theaters and off-off-Broadway plays in towns that major highways had passed by. But she did have some Hollywood and New York credits, including some Broadway shows. All bit parts. She had appeared in several versions of the Law and Order franchise, including the original series, with Jerry Orbach. In itself, that was not very impressive. Just about every actor in New York was on the show at one time or another, and Bessie’s specialty was playing different versions of bag ladies, or old dead women. I read back to her earlier credits. Yes, there it was. Bessie once had a small part in The Fantasticks. I knew that Orbach was in the original cast and wondered if he helped her get a shot on Law and Order.

Bessie couldn’t have made much money playing the kind of roles she was offered, especially given the wide gaps in her acting résumé. There were years she hardly acted at all. I presumed she did not waitress all that time, which probably explained her arrest record. I had more coffee while I considered what to do.

I knew that Ashleigh Harper was really Bessie Magruder, which meant that Harper was most likely dead, or was being held prisoner in a basement reading James Patterson novels. All things being equal, she’d be better off dead. Besides, I don’t think they have basements on Bald Head Island. But to tell you the truth, I did not care that much, one way or the other. I did care about Anna Dickson. I suspected that the Harper fraud, for that was what it was, was connected to Anna’s disappearance, but I was a long way from proving that. For all I knew, Anna had run off to Madagascar with a drummer in a rock band. It happens. Repressed religious girl finds happiness, or at least sex, with a smelly musician. Except Anna really didn’t fit that profile. Remembering her naked boobs on the deck, I didn’t think she was very repressed. And I couldn’t imagine her abandoning a brother who did so much for her.

To me, blowing up the Harper scheme was secondary to finding out what happened to Anna. For all I knew, Harper had died of natural causes, and someone just saw a way to keep the goose laying golden eggs posthumously. I was pretty sure there was something criminal about doing that, and wondered if the fraud reached into the rarefied air of New York publishing. If it did, a lot of lawyers would get rich suing everyone in sight, including Harper’s publisher, Albatross House. Then, I remembered Godfrey Benedetto, who was deeply involved with financing Albatross. Investment bankers have ways of separating themselves from the financial catastrophes of their clients, but there could be some exposure. I pulled out my cell phone and called Barry Lewinsohn. It would not be good if his firm was still doing business with Albatross House.

***

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Godfrey Benedetto said, shaking his head. “I’m trying to raise another $100 million dollars for Albatross. I have meetings with potential investors all next week.”

“Albatross may need it for bail money,” I said.

“I can’t believe that someone at the publisher didn’t catch on,” Barry Lewinsohn interjected.

“Either they were in on it,” I said, “or they were blinded by the money involved.”

The three of us were sitting in his office on the 37th floor at 20 Exchange Place in lower Manhattan. Barry’s firm was named Lewinsohn & Son. I’d asked him about that.

“My father is old school,” he had explained. “I’m an only child. He’s retired now. When he’s gone, I’ll change the name. It’s too confusing, especially when the receptionist answers the phone. People think there is more than one son, or that she has a speech impediment. Besides, Laurene wants lots of kids and some of them may be daughters.”

Now, as I looked out over the harbor and watched the ferry plow toward Staten Island past the Statue of Liberty, Barry said, “We have to figure out what the fallout will be for our clients and the firm”

“Who are your clients?”

“Mostly large institutional investors who bought Albatross bonds,” Benedetto said. “If Albatross goes belly-up, those bonds will take a hit, depending upon what’s left of the company after the lawsuits are settled.”

“What about its stock? It will certainly nosedive.”

“Albatross is a private company.”

“Too bad. You could have made a killing shorting the stock.”

“That would be illegal,” Barry said. “People go to jail.”

“Yeah. Usually small fry like Martha Stewart or some schmuck in the back office. Someday I’d like someone to explain the illegal versus immoral distinctions that S.E.C. regulators and prosecutors make. I’ll take illegal over immoral all the time on Wall Street. The guys who almost bankrupted Western Civilization a few years ago apparently did nothing illegal, so none of them went to jail. But I don’t know how they can look themselves in the mirror on their yachts. But I digress. Just what is your exposure?”

“It depends,” Barry answered. “Some lawyers will probably accuse us of being party to the fraud. They’ll argue that we had to know.”

I thought about that.

“If you hadn’t gotten Alice and me into that luncheon, whoever is behind all this might have gotten away with it. You can argue that was the reason you asked me to attend. You were suspicious. I’ll back you up.”

My cell phone buzzed. I let the call go to voicemail.

“But you were invited to the wedding as a guest,” Barry pointed out. “We weren’t paying you.”

“So what? You had your suspicions and you took advantage of my good nature. I was happy to help you out. Hell, you could argue that I’ve been on your payroll for months.”

“How the hell can I do that?”

“Remember that large bonus you gave me after I helped Laurene out last year.” Actually, that had been Laurene’s doing, but it wouldn’t matter. “One man’s bonus is another man’s retainer. We’ll say that I’ve been working on the case since, and as soon as I found definitive proof, you put the brakes on further financing for Albatross and notified the authorities. Existing bondholders may take a bath, but with your record of probity, and willingness to testify against Albatross, you should be in the clear. It shouldn’t hurt future business if you are known for doing due diligence above and beyond the norm.”

“What if Albatross is just an innocent bystander?” Benedetto asked.

“They might not have known about the scam,” I said, “but I hardly think they are innocent. Why don’t we go over there and find out?”

Barry looked at Benedetto.

“Godfrey, set up a meeting at Albatross. For today. Meanwhile, I’ll get Alton on the payroll, officially.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said, after Benedetto left. “Especially after the nasty things I said about Wall Street.”

“I happen to agree with you. Besides, it will look better. And you may have saved us millions.”

Barry went off to see how Benedetto was doing and I checked my phone message. It was from Wayne Miller.

“Jesus, Alt. I owe you. Tanya is perfect! And she can act, too.”

Maybe I should tell Wayne she’s also a hell of a kisser. I decided to let him find out for himself.

CHAPTER 19– A BRIDGE TOO FAR

Albatross House was on 8th Avenue near 57th Street. In the cab ride there, the three of us discussed strategy.

“I don’t want to show them all our cards,” I said. “If we do, they may immediately pull the plug on The Lighthouse Chronicles and try some damage control. Then the people on Bald Head might panic and disappear. My gut tells me that the two people who are missing, Ashleigh Harper and Anna Dickson, are dead. And I don’t think they died of natural causes. Let’s not even tell them that I went to the Harper luncheon on a whim.”

“Don’t we have a legal obligation to report a crime?” Benedetto asked. “And please don’t launch into another tirade about Wall Street immorality.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I said, smiling. “We need something that will hold up in court. We don’t even know if Albatross was a victim. And the manuscript might have been genuine. Unless I can prove that someone was murdered, there may only be a scandal that will make reams of lawyers rich.”

“But we have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients,” Barry said.

“Why? They’ve already been bilked. They’ll have to go to court. You are not going to do any more Albatross financing. And there is something else.”

“What is that?”

“If the people behind this are as ruthless as I think they are, they will tie up any loose ends before they disappear.”

“Loose ends?”

“He means the fake Harper,” Benedetto said.

“Right,” I agreed. “I met the woman. She may be a con artist, but she’s an old lady. I can’t see her being the brains behind such an elaborate scam. Once it is exposed, she becomes a potential witness. I don’t want to get her killed if I can help it.”

Barry nodded.

“OK, so what are we doing at Albatross, and who are you supposed to be?”

“How is the book doing?”

“It’s sold a lot of copies, but the reviews have been mixed.”

“I read that a lot of people feel as if they’ve been misled. Some bookstores are offering to refund money to disappointed customers.”

“That’s true,” Benedetto said. “And the fact that Harper, or whoever she is, refuses to come off her island to do a book tour has generated a lot of rumors that she’s not all there, mentally.”

The cab pulled in front of the building where Albatross was located.

“Here’s the play,” I said. “I’m the private investigator that you hired to look into allegations that Ashleigh Harper has dementia. You are worried that more bonds will be a hard sell to investors if they believe the author is senile and is being manipulated. I’ll say that I found her to be fragile but am not sure about anything else. We’ll ask them what they think. I want to get a feel for how high up this goes. Maybe something will shake loose.”

Albatross House was on the 14th floor and when we exited the elevator we were greeted with all the deference that investment banking money commands. A receptionist led us down a plushly carpeted hallway flanked by walls that were plastered with book covers and various publishing awards. She sat us in a paneled conference room and offered coffee and bottled water. We all declined, and a moment after she left two men and a woman came into the room. We stood.

“Godfrey, how nice to see you,” the taller of the two men said.

Benedetto introduced Barry and me to the man, whose name was Odin Glenneagle. I did not quite believe it until I read his business card later. I mean, who the hell is named Odin Glenneagle? He was the chief financial officer of Albatross House and was wearing an expensive blue suit.

“Well, a private investigator,” Glenneagle said, smiling. “I guess we’ll have to be careful what we say.”

I thought the smile was a bit forced. He introduced his companions. The other man was Wallace Webster, the fiction editor at Albatross House. The woman was Margaret Whittaker.

“Peggy is new to Albatross,” Glenneagle said proudly. “She was editor of the literary journal at Wellesley.”

“My girlfriend teaches at Barnard,” I said, just as proudly.

That threw Glenneagle off for a second, but he recovered.

“Peggy is now Ashleigh Harper’s personal editor”.

She had to be in her early 20’s and was pretty in a stern, Ivy League sort of way. She looked out of her depth, and soon proved it.

“I’m still not clear on why we are here, Odin,” Webster said. “We’re not on the business side of things.”

Webster’s tone, particularly the way he said “business”, fell somewhere between condescending and dismissive. He was wearing a lot of tweed and a tartan scarf. When he sat down, he flipped the scarf over one shoulder, crossed his legs and stared out the window.

“I asked for you and Peggy, Wallace, at Godfrey’s request. He and Barry have provided important financing for Albatross House. If you must know, I’m in the dark about why your presence here is needed, as well.” Glenneagle turned to Godfrey. “Perhaps you can enlighten us.”

“Well, as you know, we are preparing to raise more money for Albatross House. Normally, that would not be a problem. But while The Lighthouse Chronicles has been a financial success for you, thanks mainly to pre-orders that assured its two-million first printing would sell out, reviews have been, to put it mildly, mixed. Some of our investors are worried about the potential for future Harper novels.”

“I did not realize that the mavens of Wall Street read books,” Webster said, still looking out the window.

“We mostly read corporate balance sheets,” Barry said coldly. “And, very frankly, I am not enamored of Albatross House’s.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Glenneagle said nervously. “No need to get testy. After all, we’re all after the same thing, really. Wallace, it is only natural that Wall Street, as you term it, wants to protect its investment. Perhaps you can reassure Godfrey and Barry about the prospects for our upcoming Harper releases.”

Webster sighed dramatically, and actually turned to face us.

“The so-called critics who denigrated The Lighthouse Chronicles failed to realize how far Ashleigh has evolved since To Bury a Turtle Dove,” he intoned. “Very frankly, I’ve always considered her first novel, which predated me, of course, to be a bit too wordy and saccharine. The unwashed masses have, for reasons I can barely fathom, elevated it to cult status.”

I would like to have pointed out that the “unwashed masses” he spoke of included most of the people in the country. I would have also liked to punch his lights out. But showing unusual restraint, I did not act on either inclination.

“When I first read the Lighthouse manuscript,” Webster continued, “I knew I was in the presence of genius. Harper had reduced her prose to pristine simplicity and made the banal, luminous. I have even higher hopes for her next novel.” He turned to Whittaker. “Don’t you agree, Margaret?”

I braced for more pseudo-intellectual blather from Whittaker, but she merely said, “Yes, Wallace.”

She looked at Webster with puppy-like devotion. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t puppy love. I’d have bet my blackjack – if I had one – that Webster was pounding some Wellesley cutlet.

“But will it sell?” Barry said.

“Of course it will sell,” Webster said, dropping his literary persona. “Readers are like sheep. They buy the author’s name, not the novel. With enough money and the right publicity campaign, I could make a bestseller out of my laundry list.”

I glanced quickly at Glenneagle. He did not look happy.

“But Harper is a virtual recluse,” Barry said. “Don’t you need her to do book tours, that sort of thing?”

“Ordinarily, author involvement in a campaign is crucial,” Webster said, with a hint of exasperation. “But in Harper’s case, the air of mystery is potent. I could care less if she ever comes off her bloody island.”

“There is something else,” Godfrey said. “We’ve heard rumors that Harper is more than a recluse. That she’s become a bit odd, perhaps even senile.”

“That’s rubbish,” Webster said, “undoubtedly spread by jealous rivals in the publishing game.”

“I agree,” I said. “She looked fine to me when I spoke to her a few weeks ago.”

The three Albatross people looked at me.

“I wondered why you are here,” Glenneagle said. He turned to Benedetto. “You had him check up on Harper.”

“It seemed prudent,” Godfrey said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” Glenneagle said quickly.

“Well, I do,” Webster interjected. “I don’t like my authors harassed by some gumshoe!”

“I didn’t harass her, Wally,” I said evenly. “We just had a nice chat. She didn’t even know I was a gumshoe. Maybe because I wasn’t wearing galoshes.”

“I beg your pardon.”

I could tell that no one ever called him “Wally”.

“The word ‘gumshoe’ originally referred to a shoe with a rubber sole.” I was showing off. “In the old days, that would have meant galoshes. The idea was that rubber-soled shoes allow someone, like a cop or private eye, to walk stealthily. But I digress. Tell me, Wally, how does she appear to you?”

Webster cleared his throat and tried to recoup some dignity.

“I have not met the woman,” he said. “But she sounds fine on the phone.”

We all digested that for a moment. I turned to Peggy Whittaker, giving her my best smile. She managed not to undress, which I subscribed to her Ivy League background. Alice sometimes undresses, but, then, she is new to the Ivies.

“How does she appear to you, Peggy?”

She glanced at both Glenneagle and Webster.

“Ashleigh sounds fine to me, too.”

I almost hated to do it to the kid, because I already suspected the answer. But I had to.

“I mean, how did she look to you?”

More glances.

Finally, she said, “Well, I’ve never met her, either.”

I thought about whipping out my iPhone to take a picture of the look on Glenneagle’s face, but decided it would be inappropriate.

“There is no need for face-to-face contact,” Webster said, trying to explain the unexplainable. “Harper wants to be left alone. She limits her appearances to a couple of events on her island. We had to insist on that, just to prove she’s alive.”

Webster obviously meant that comment to be humorous and seemed happy when we all laughed. What a card!

“Her lawyer, Alexandra Nidus, did not want a big deal made of those events, so we just sent a junior staffer to help out. Pass out books, and the like. She said Harper was charming. Other than that, we accommodated her wishes for privacy and did everything over the phone or by email. No reflection on Margaret’s editing abilities, but Lighthouse needed very little work and Harper approved what few changes we suggested.”

I bet she did. I decided to throw Webster a lifeline he didn’t deserve. I didn’t want him contacting Nidus or anyone else.

“Well, as I’ve told Barry and Godfrey, the lady I met seemed to have all her marbles. She had, I don’t know, great stage presence, if that’s the right word.”

Neither Webster or Whittaker reacted to that remark. I did not expect them to. By now, I was pretty sure they were scammees, not scammers. Idiots, to be sure, but not criminals.

Webster was grateful. He even smiled.

“There you have it. There is no reason Ashleigh’s future books won’t be bestsellers. Mr. Rhode should alleviate any concerns your investors have about Harper’s condition.”

“Mental, yes,” I said, “but she’s not a spring chicken. The goose laying the golden eggs may not be around forever.”

“Yes, what about that?” Barry said.

“Well, we have at least two of her works in the pipeline,” Webster said. “Expect them any day now. And sometimes posthumous novels do very well.” He saw the looks, and added solemnly. “Of course we wish Ashleigh the best.”

He turned to me and actually smiled.

“I, for one, am delighted you met her, Alton. Good show!”

He looked like he wanted to sit on my lap and purr. To forestall that, I stood and looked at my watch.

“Where has the time gone? I’m late for a stakeout at Grant’s Tomb. Someone has been shooting all the pigeons.”

On the way out the door, I turned to Peggy Whittaker.

“I wonder if Albatross House would be interested in the Brooklyn Bridge?”

She looked at me and feigned interest. After all, I had walked in with the money guys and now seemed to be on her side.

“Is it fiction, or non-fiction?”

I heard Barry clear his throat.

“No, I’m talking about the real bridge. I can get you a good deal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come on, Alton,” Barry said quickly, grabbing my arm. “I’ll drop you off at your stakeout.”

***

In the elevator, Barry turned to me.

“The fucking Brooklyn Bridge?”

“I couldn’t resist. Those fools bought and edited a book from someone they never met, just to make a quick buck. And they can’t wait to publish something else from her. I think we can safely assume nobody here is in on the scam. They aren’t smart enough to come up with something like that.”

“I wonder if Glenneagle knows his top editors are screwing each other’s brains out?”

Not too much got by Barry Lewinsohn.

“I feel like a world-class jerk for working with these people,” Benedetto said.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Godfrey,” Barry said. “In my wildest imagination I would not believe what I just heard. Did you see the look on Glenneagle’s face when Wally and Peggy said they had never met Harper? He didn’t know what was going on either. I feel sorry for the poor bastard. He’s going to be out of work soon, along with the others.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said. “Invincible ignorance is its own defense. Glenneagle may take the fall, and maybe the kid. But Wally the Weasel will figure out a way to blame some junior copy editor making 20 grand a year. But you would think that after Clifford Irving pulled his hoax with the Howard Hughes biography the industry would be cautious.”

“Alton,” Barry said, “how long will it take you to get what you want on Bald Head Island?”

“Hard to say. I hope I convinced Webster that he has nothing to worry about.”

“People will start to talk pretty soon, especially if we cancel investor meetings.”

I remembered my last trip to that part of North Carolina.

“You flew into a private airport for the wedding, as I recall.”

Barry smiled.

“I’ll call Teterboro, and tell them to put a jet at your disposal tomorrow. And there will be a car waiting for you when you land.”

CHAPTER 20 - DINNER INVITATION

I made arrangements for Gunner and Scar, and early the next afternoon I headed out to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

It turned out that Lewinsohn & Son belonged to one of those fractional jet ownership programs. The company had a choice of a half dozen different corporate planes available on short notice. The Gulfstream reserved for me could carry nine passengers in plush splendor. I was the only passenger and felt like James Bond. But I passed on a martini and settled for a Heineken and some cashews, quickly and efficiently supplied by a very lovely hostess who undoubtedly wondered who the hell I was to rate such royal treatment for a flight lasting just over an hour.

When I landed at the general aviation field outside Wilmington, North Carolina, just after 4 PM, I was hoping for an Aston Martin as my rental car. But the silver Porsche 911 waiting for me sufficed. It had a GPS system that probably could have found Amelia Earhart, and I was at the ferry dock in Southport a half hour later.

Once I got off the ferry on Bald Head Island, however, I lost the 007 cachet. It’s hard to act like a super sleuth when driving around in a rented golf cart.

In fact, I was at a loss as how to proceed. I knew I could probably locate Sandy Nidus easily enough, but then what? Tail her in a golf cart? I thought about just staking out the house in which the phony Harper was staying. But a man on a golf cart watching a house, even if he moved around frequently, would stand out like, well, a man on a golf cart watching a house. When I passed the golf course, I could see some players. I supposed I could rent some clubs and act like I was looking for a lost ball if I was approached. That probably wouldn’t work, considering that the nearest fairway was more than a mile away from the house.

I was hungry. The cashews had been my late lunch.

Rule No. 1 in the gumshoe handbook: When there is serious thinking to be done, eat.

I drove my cart over to Mojo’s. I was surprised to see that it was busy. I found a spot at the bar and the bartender came over. He recognized me by name, which meant that I had probably spent too much time there in my previous stay. I ordered a beer and asked for a menu.

“I would have thought the island was pretty deserted this time of year,” I said. \

“Still have a few weddings going on,” the bartender said, “and the annual Bald Island Bluefish Tournament is on.” He looked up and down the bar. “Plus, it’s Happy Hour, which we extend in the off-season.”

“How long is it now?”

“Goes from 11 AM to 11 PM.”

“I may move here,” I said, handing him back the menu.

“Any specials?”

“Bluefish.”

“Burger and fries, and another beer.”

While I ate, I came up with my plan. It was Rule #2: When you don’t know what to do, ring the doorbell.

“What’s that?”

It was the bartender. I didn’t realize I’d been thinking out loud.

“Nothing. I’m a man with a plan.”

“Yeah. You fit in real well with our Happy Hour crowd.”

***

Alexandra Nidus answered the door.

I had expected someone besides “Ashleigh Harper” to do so, since there was another golf cart in the gravel driveway.

“Yes, can I help you?”

Then she recognized me.

“Mr. Rhode, how nice to see you again.” I was pretty sure she didn’t mean it. I was about as welcome as an S.T.D. “What brings you back to our fair island?”

“Hello, Sandy,” I said. “I’m looking for my niece.”

Her eyes flickered for a second.

“Your niece?”

“Yes. Anna Dickson. You must remember her. You helped me get her into the Harper luncheon back in August. I believe you gave her your email and she was going to contact you with some follow-up questions about The Lighthouse Chronicles.”

I wanted to see how much she would admit.

“Oh, yes. Small girl, very cute.” Nidus smiled. “I never believed she was your niece. We’d spotted her trying to get in without you. It was pretty obvious that you didn’t know each other and you just did her a favor. I didn’t want to make an issue out of it. She seemed to be a very nice person, and you were very generous to help her out.”

Sandy Nidus was very good.

“You would make a pretty good detective,” I said.

“Coming from a real detective, that’s a nice compliment.”

“Did Anna ever contact you?”

“Yes. We exchanged emails. I answered all of her questions. I hope she was satisfied.”

I didn’t mention that Anna thought she was being given the runaround.

We had reached a point in the conversation when leaving someone standing in the doorway is rude, and maybe suspicious. I smiled at Nidus, but did not say anything. She took the hint.

“Would you like to come in, Mr. Rhode?”

“Yes, thank you. And please call me Alton.”

It was an older house, with a kitchen and dining area on the first floor, and sleeping areas presumably higher up. Most of the newer places on Bald Head, I’d noticed, had floor plans just the opposite, so that occupants could see out over the ocean from living areas on the second or third floors. As with newer houses, this one also had an open floor plan, with the kitchen flowing almost seamlessly into a great room that had couches and chairs on one side near a large television, and a dining area near sliders through which one could catch a glimpse of the ocean over the dunes. The kitchen had all the modern appliances, but the furniture was rustically old.

“Would you like something to drink, coffee perhaps?”

“No, I’m fine.”

We sat across from each other by the television. I heard a squawk. I turned and saw the parrot in the birdcage that Anna Dickson had mentioned in her letter.

“Excuse me,” Sandy Nidus said, standing and walking over to drape a towel over the cage. “He becomes nervous around strangers.”

She sat back down, kicked off her sandals and tucked her feet under herself. She had red toenails and very nice ankles.

“Does he talk?” I asked.

“No.”

“Too bad. I bet he’d make a hell of a witness.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. How long have you been Miss Harper’s attorney?”

“About five years.”

“How did that come about?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. Occupational hazard. But it must be public knowledge.”

“It is public knowledge. I handled some legal work for Ashleigh related to her will and finances, and we became very good friends. She has no family and came to rely on me for just about everything. I’m afraid the outside world is a bit much for her. She did not handle fame well. She wanted me to protect her privacy, and, with a few exceptions, I have.”

“That luncheon being one of them.”

“Yes. The publisher insisted. But it was a trial for Ashleigh.”

“There may be more.” I said.

Sandy Nidus gave me a strange look.

“You said you are looking for Miss Dickson,” she finally said. “Do you think she is on Bald Head?”

“I don’t know. But I know for certain she came back here to see Ashleigh Harper sometime early in the fall, and I’m pretty sure she returned more recently.”

“Really?”

She seemed genuinely perplexed.

“Yes. She wrote her brother about the fall visit, and in the letter she indicated that she was coming back.”

“She should have contacted me. I handle all of Miss Harper’s affairs. I could have saved her the trouble of coming. As we made quite clear when we all met the first time, Ashleigh does not receive visitors. The book luncheon was a rare event. A very rare event.”

“So, you have not seen or heard from her?”

“I told you. She contacted me soon after the luncheon, by email. That’s the last I heard from her. If she came to Bald Head two times after the luncheon, we didn’t see her on either occasion. Are you saying she is missing?”

“Yes, for weeks.”

“How dreadful!” She seemed concerned. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you involved? I mean, I know you are a private detective, but I assumed the girl was just a casual acquaintance.”

“She mentioned me in the letter to her brother and he sought me out. He asked me to locate her.”

“What about the police?”

“They’ve had no luck.”

“I know the local police chief well,” Sandy said. “Perhaps I can make an inquiry.”

If she was acting, she was probably as good as the woman I knew to be upstairs.

“Thank you. I’ll do that myself.”

“Did Miss Dickson say anything else in her letter?”

I knew she was fishing.

“I’m not at liberty to say. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course. Is there anything else?”

“I would like to speak to Miss Harper.”

“Why, pray tell?”

“Perhaps she saw Anna. Are you in this house 24/7?”

“Well, my office is here, now. It made more sense, especially after the publication of The Lighthouse Chronicles.” But I do run out, to shop and the like.”

“And to play a round of golf.”

Sandy Nidus smiled.

“Yes, you saw me at the club. I do have a life, and some other clients. I enjoy an occasional dinner with friends.”

Or a roll in the seaweed on Leonard Vole’s boat.

“Ashleigh is perfectly capable of taking care of herself for a few hours,” she added.

“Perhaps Anna Dickson came here while you were out.”

Sandy Nidus shook her head.

“I think she would have mentioned that.”

“I would still like to speak to her. Just to cover all the bases.”

Sandy Nidus didn’t say anything for a full minute. The only sounds came from the ocean, from breaking waves, and from the covered cage, where I could hear the parrot shuffling back and forth on his perch.

“Well, I don’t see the harm in it,” Nidus finally said. “Ashleigh naps a lot but I know she’s awake now. I just spoke to her about dinner. In fact, I was just going to run out to get something from the market. You don’t mind sitting with her for a while, do you?”

That took me by surprise. It was more than I had hoped for.

“Not at all,” I said.

“And I know that we are out of wine. It will give me a chance to buy some. You will stay for dinner, won’t you? I make a mean cassoulet.”

“I’d be delighted.”

“Come. I’ll take you to her.”

We went up to the third floor. “Ashleigh Harper” was sitting on the deck looking at the ocean. It was cool, and she was bundled up, wearing slacks and a light ski jacket. There was a quilt covering her legs.

“Ashleigh, this is Mr. Rhode. You remember him. He was at your luncheon back in August. He’s staying for dinner and wants to chat with you while I go to the store.”

The old woman narrowed her eyes and looked startled. Sandy Nidus left.

CHAPTER 21 - LIGHTS OUT

I leaned against the deck’s railing and smiled down at the old woman.

“I take it that you don’t get many visitors,” I said.

She shook her head.

“No. My health is not what it used to be. Who are you, again?”

“My name is Alton Rhode? The question is, who are you?”

She looked startled. And a bit wary.

“I am Ashleigh Harper,” she said.

It sounded to me like she was exaggerating her Southern accent. I smiled.

“I’m afraid that won’t fly anymore, Bessie.”

She didn’t reply right away. Finally she said, “Shit.”

“And it’s getting very deep, Bessie.”

“You a cop?”

“Private. But the real fuzz won’t be far behind.”

Her hand went below the quilt. I didn’t expect her to come out with a gun, but my own hand drifted toward my holster. I figured I could beat an octogenarian woman to the draw. And if I couldn’t, then I deserved to be shot by an octogenarian woman. But when her liver-spotted hand reemerged, it merely held a pack of cigarettes and a pink Bic lighter.

“I need a damn drink, too,” she said, this time without a trace of an accent. “There’s a bottle of Jack Daniels in the drawer by my bed. A glass, too. And an ashtray. Do you mind?”

I went and found her stash. By the time I got back to the porch, she was smoking like a chimney. I poured her a drink. She knocked back half of it. It was obvious she wasn’t your typical octogenarian, which made me wonder if I could really have beaten her to the draw.

“I don’t know where my manners are,” she said. “There’s another glass in the bathroom.”

“Maybe later. I thought you were a scotch drinker.”

“I like to vary. What made you say that?”

“Anna Dickson said you drank scotch when she was here.”

“Who?”

“Young girl who was with me at that book signing in August. She came back here some weeks later and spoke to you. You gave her a drink and she left quickly when someone came home.”

Bessie Magruder lit another cigarette.

“I remember her. Nice kid. I’m glad she didn’t stick around. I think she was suspicious. I was running out of lies. Is she why you are here?”

“She’s missing.”

Bessie’s eyes widened in surprise. I didn’t think she was acting.

“Since she came to see me?”

“No. She came back later.”

“I never saw her again, after that first visit. She came here when Sandy was out, or she would never have gotten in. I shouldn’t have even spoken to her. But I was going stir crazy and she seemed so sweet.”

“Did you tell Sandy about her visit?

“No. She would have gone ape on me. I can’t believe the kid tried to come back. It was blind luck she got to see me that first time.”

“If you’re telling the truth Bessie, I think her luck ran out. My guess is that she contacted Nidus with her suspicions, or she tried to get here again on her own and they spotted her. Either way, no one has seen her since. I think they killed her, too.”

The “too” rocked her.

“Bessie, surely you don’t think Ashleigh Harper is still alive, do you?”

She finished her drink and held out the glass. I poured.

“I don’t know. They put her in a nursing home. She may have died since.”

“Bessie, this isn’t the kind of scam that works with someone still breathing. And I don’t think Anna Dickson is in a nursing home. Surely you must have suspected something.”

Magruder looked away. When she faced me again, she shrugged.

“I needed the money. There ain’t much work for an old has-been actress.”

I could have pointed out that she couldn’t claim to be a has-been when she never was a “has”, but I let it go.

“How did Nidus find you?”

“Sandy saw me at a dinner theater in Myrtle Beach. I was playing Martha Brewster, one of the nutty old aunts in Arsenic and Old Lace. Good part. One of the best I’ve had in years. Anyway, she came back a few weeks later and asked me if I’d be interested in a private gig. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she offered me more money than I make in a year and said if everything worked out, I’d be set for the rest of my life. No more scrounging for parts in the boondocks. I took one look at Harper and knew I could pull it off. We could have been sisters.”

“You know it is a fraud, don’t you?”

“Don’t talk to me about fraud! My whole career I’ve had to struggle against crooks and shysters. It was who you knew and who you blew.” She laughed harshly. “That don’t work for me at my age. Besides, the real Harper was being stupid. And selfish. Who gives a damn if what she wrote years ago was crap. People would buy it. We’d make a ton of money. Everybody would be happy. I didn’t see the real harm in it. You read the papers. You know what’s going on in the world. The people who ruined the economy get bailed out by the Government. I don’t see any of them getting into trouble or going to jail.”

I didn’t want to get into a political discussion with her, in part because she was making some sense. My job was to get justice for Anna Dickson.

“Who else is in on this?”

“Vole. I don’t think it was his idea. He ain’t that bright. But Sandy has him by the short hairs. Jesus, I can hear them screwing all the time.”

I’d suspected Vole. He was the killer in the woodpile.

“Bessie, if you come with me now, and tell the truth, I may be able to help you. If not, I go to the cops, who won’t be so accommodating. They will probably charge you as an accessory to murder, fraud and probably plagiarism. I wouldn’t worry about the plagiarism. There’s a lot of that going around. But the other two charges will probably land you in jail for life. At your age, I don’t think you want to waste your golden years making license plates, although at least the work would be original.”

“What are you talking about? Murder? I didn’t kill anyone.”

“I didn’t say you did. But I’m not sure how involved you are.”

“I told you, I just made believe I was Harper. It was just a role.”

“That’s the point. You’re an actress. I can’t be sure you aren’t acting now. But even if you are, don’t you want to be the first one through the door at the prosecutors’ office. They will cut you a deal, maybe even offer immunity for your testimony. I don’t think anyone will believe you actually killed someone. And there is something else. Nidus knows this thing is unraveling. You’re the only one who can hang both her and Vole. You’re a liability, lady, no matter how you look at it.”

Bessie Magruder’s face lost a bit of color.

“I don’t think Sandy would hurt me.”

She reached for another cigarette, and that’s when I saw it. I grabbed her wrist.

“Where did you get this?”

She heard the menace in my voice and shrank back.

“Vole gave it to me.” She tried to pull her hand back. “You’re hurting me!”

I ignored her and undid the watch that had caught my eye. It was the pink-and-blue Disney watch from Frozen.

“Let’s go,” I said, coldly.

Bessie Magruder started to say something but she saw something in my face. She stood up and started to follow me. I stepped through the sliders. Sandy Nidus was standing across the room by the door to the hallway. I briefly wondered if she planned to give me any trouble. Bessie stopped short and said, “Oh, Christ”.

“Don’t worry,” I said, turning to take her arm.

That’s when I saw Leonard Vole standing against the wall to my right. I’d never heard him. Maybe he was wearing gumshoes. I reached for my revolver. Vole was no octogenarian. I caught a brief glimpse of something long and brown swinging at my head.

CHAPTER 22– ANOTHER BOAT RIDE

I woke up with a searing headache. My face felt puffy and I had a burning sensation in my right cheek. In fact, my whole right side, on which I was laying, felt kind of funny.

I really didn’t mind the discomfort. The important thing was waking up. The real Ashleigh Harper and Anna Dickson apparently did not have that opportunity.

I knew exactly where I was. Back on Leonard Vole’s boat. A lump on my right thigh stung and I realized that I still had my iPhone in my pocket. I must have fallen on it. I wondered if it still worked. It would be nice to call 911. Unfortunately, that was not an option. My hands were tied behind my back. I could tell from the pain in my wrists that I was bound with something thin but strong. Probably monofilament fishing line.

From the sound of the engine and the deck’s pitching up and down, which caused me to bang my already sore head, She Got the House was moving at a fast clip. I managed to sit up. I was in the stern, scrunched in the corner next to the rotating fisherman’s chair from which I had landed the shark in happier times. There was the same sturdy rod with a massive big-game reel in the holder at the front of the seat. The shiny metal lure anchored by one of its treble hooks to one of the rod’s guides looked even bigger than the one I had used for the tuna. Its wire leader was again linked to regular monofilament fishing line, undoubtedly the same 40-pound-test line that immobilized me. Breaking it would be impossible. All I would accomplish would be to slit my wrists.

I could see the faint lights of Bald Head Island receding in the distance. I was still a bit woozy, and the fact that I had been clobbered over the head and was now trussed up did not bode well for my future prospects. I was pretty sure I was not going fishing. I suspected that I would soon be sleeping with the bluefish, or whatever was running these days.

I moaned, louder than necessary, to give the impression that I was in worse shape than I was. My only chance, slim as it was, depended on my making Vole overconfident.

“Awake, are we?”

He’d come down from the bridge and was standing in front of me, slapping his wooden truncheon in his palm. I didn’t like the sound it made against his meaty hand.

“Is that what you hit me with?”

“Yeah. Just a love tap, but I figured you’d be out for the duration. You have a hard head, pal.”

“Harder than an old woman and a college kid. I assume you used it on the real Ashleigh Harper and Anna.”

“Who?”

“Anna Dickson. The young girl who was at the reception with me.”

“Oh, your niece.”

Vole laughed.

“Actually, I used a pillow on the old coot. She put up a pretty good fight. Better than you did.”

It wasn’t the time to point out that he’d suckered me. But I wanted to keep the conversation going.

“And the girl?”

“Strangled her.”

I stared at him.

“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t do anything else to her, if that’s what you are thinking.”

“Nice to know you have standards, Vole.” I nodded toward the ocean, which set off my headache again. “But why did you have to beat me up, too?”

He looked confused.

“I didn’t beat you up, chum.”

“I’m sure my face would disagree with you.”

He laughed.

“Oh, that. You got pretty banged up when you fell out of the golf cart. I took a turn to fast. Sorry about that.”

“You brought me here in a golf cart?”

“Had to. My boat was at the marina. It was no big deal. Just propped you up and drove to the marina.”

“And nobody noticed?”

“Not too many people around at night. Did pass a couple of carts. Even waved to them.” Vole cackled. “They probably think you were rude because you didn’t wave back. Or just drunk and passed out. Lucky no one was around when you took your dive out of the cart, though.”

“You drive the other two in your golf cart?”

He laughed.

“You mean like Weekend at Bernie’s?” Vole laughed. “They filmed that movie right here on Bald Head. Bet you didn’t know that. Anyway, I took Harper and the kid right off the beach behind the house. Had some time to set it up then. Like I said, my boat was at the marina tonight. Would’ve been tough, anyway. It’s low tide. Dragging your sorry ass across the sand would have been a bitch. You weigh a lot more than those gals. And paddling a skiff past the sandbars would have been no fun.”

“I like talking to you, Len. But I have to ask. Who is driving the boat now?”

“Got it on autopilot.” Vole looked at his watch. “We’re almost there, chum.”

“Almost where?”

He just smiled.

“Burial at sea?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Is that what you did with Harper and Anna?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Bodies occasionally turn up,” I said, “even if they are weighted down.”

In fact, I knew the opposite was more likely, especially when the disposal is in the ocean. Entire airliners with 300 passengers and cargo ships and their crews disappear without a trace.

“Won’t be a problem. With them, or you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, let’s just say that the old broad Harper wanted to be remembered. I don’t think she counted on being dismembered. Same with the girl. I made a mistake with the watch, though. Almost threw it over with it still on her arm. Thought Bessie might like it. That’s what I get for having a soft heart. But it’s going into the ocean soon. Along with Bessie. What do you say to an actress? Break a leg? I’m gonna help her with that.”

My blood ran cold, but I remained calm. The rotten son-of-a-bitch started cackling at his humor. I saw some insanity in his eyes. I was dealing with a real lunatic. Now I was almost sorry that I had kept the conversation going.

“Why Bessie? She said she didn’t know what was going on. Did she?”

“Nah. She would never have gone along with this. But she’s extra weight, now. Too many people gone missing. She’d be with us on the boat right now, but it would have been awkward driving two unconscious people in the golf cart. I’ll have to make another trip. Then me and Sandy are gonna take the money and run. Some nice little non-extradition island in the Pacific, where I can fish and fuck to my heart’s content.”

“I don’t suppose I could talk you out of this?”

“Not a chance, chum. But don’t worry.” Vole again slapped the truncheon into his palm, harder. “You won’t feel a thing.”

“Just do me a favor, will you, Vole?”

He smiled.

“Sure. I guess you can have a last request.” He cackled. “No last meal, though. What is it?”

“Stop calling me chum.”

“I can do that.” Vole got a strange look in his eyes and grinned. “Kind of funny, though. Since that’s what you are about to become. Chum.”

Vole looked behind the boat. Small fish were jumping.

“The lights are attracting a lot of bait fish. Sharks will be right behind them. Come to think of it, you get to be your own last meal.” He looked at his watch again. “Jesus. You made me miss my spot. Be right back. I’ve got to come about. Now, don’t go anywhere.”

He climbed the ladder and a moment later I felt the boat turn. I knew I only had moments to live. Once he hit me over the head again, I was a dead man. And I was not too sure that his idea of anesthetic would work on someone being cut up into fish bait. I had only one chance. I had to make him mad enough to want to carve me up alive. I moaned at the thought.

This time, I wasn’t acting.

CHAPTER 23 - CHUM

A few minutes later the boat slowed, and then started wallowing in gentle swells. Vole had put the engine on idle. He turned on some floodlights that lighted the rear of the boat and the surrounding water. He came down the ladder and went over to some sort of storage locker. He started piling knives and other utensils on the deck. I was about to be butchered.

“I can see by your tattoo that you were a SEAL, Vole.”

“Goddamn right. One of the best.”

He still had his back to me. I could hear the pride in his voice. And something else.

“I was in the Army,” I said. “Special Forces.”

“What? You trying to bond with me?” He snorted. “You guys were fucking pussies.”

“Why did they kick you out of the SEALS?”

Now he turned around.

“Who says they kicked me out? I retired.”

“To run a fishing boat? Nah. You got bounced. What was it? Mental discharge. You fuck too many goats. Suck too many camel dicks. Those are about the only reasons the SEALS would bounce a guy like you. Unless.”

He walked toward me. His hands were empty. No truncheon. And, thankfully, no carving knife. But the fact that his hands looked like ham hocks mitigated whatever relief I felt.

“Unless what?”

“Unless you just bullshitted me, Vole. I bet you were a washout. No disgrace in that. SEALS take only the toughest. How far did you get before you rang the bell?” I laughed. Not easy to do when you’re about to be turned into pork chops. “I bet you didn’t even go to SEAL training. Man, I hate it when guys make up stories. Pretend they are veterans. I bet you have a whole drawer full of medals you bought at one of those military supply shops they have down here. Probably put them on to help you get a boner, right?”

Vole straddled my legs, reached down and grabbed me by my shirt. He lifted my face to within inches of his. There was spittle on his lips. His breath would have sunk the Lusitania.

“Listen, you cocksucker. I ain’t gonna knock you out before I slice you up. I’m gonna dice you in little fuckin’ pieces. By the time you die, you’re gonna be able to see all your body parts in neat little piles. I was the best fucking SEAL in my outfit. They drummed me out on some bullshit charge, cause I wasted a couple of towel heads they said were on our side. Informants, they said. Maybe they should have told me. All them fuckin’ ragheads looked the same to me.”

Vole started lowering me back to the deck. I went limp, as if I was spent and helpless. It was my chance. He was overconfident. Killing old women and kids will do that to you. He should have tied up my legs. My right knee came up and caught him squarely in the groin. I don’t think anyone keeps a record of that sort of thing, but it certainly was a personal best for me. I probably only imagined the squish of his balls. But I didn’t imagine his howl of pain, which probably could be heard in Bermuda.

He staggered back and I used both feet to kick him in the face. He rolled back across the deck and slid into the carving equipment he planned to use on me. He rolled around, still screaming and cursing a blue streak. I didn’t like the cursing, not because I am prudish, but because he was getting his breath and wits back.

I managed to stand up, which is a lot harder than it sounds when your hands are tied behind your back and the boat is pitching and yawing, or whatever boats do. Vole was on his hands and knees now and started to get up. The odds were still in his favor, so I went over and kicked him in the Adams Apple. He gurgled horribly and rolled on his back, one hand on his throat, the other on his groin. I debated kicking him again somewhere else now that he had run out of hands, but thought my only real chance was to get untied. I made for the cabin. I slammed the door shut and, turning around, managed to get it locked. But I was sure Vole could easily bash his way through. I needed something to cut the rope on my wrists.

I looked around frantically. In one corner, about belt high on a shelf that girdled the cabin, I saw it. The small fisherman’s knife was still standing straight up from the wooden cutting board in which it was embedded. I flung myself backwards on the shelf just as Vole smashed at the door. I did not have time for finesse. I slammed my wrists against the sharp edge of the blade and started sawing up and down. The knife cut into the line, but my forearms were also slashed badly. With my concentration on Vole’s progress with the door, I barely noticed the pain. But I knew it would be intense later. I was just hoping there would be a later. Vole stopped his battering. Maybe the door was stronger than it looked. Or maybe, having spent so much time crafting it, he did not want to break it down. What he did was put his fist through one of the glass panes and started to unlock the door with his hand. His forearm was streaked with blood. Must have hurt like hell. That didn’t seem to bother him, either.

He came through the door just as my bonds came free. He had not seen what I had done, so I backed into a corner and kept my hands behind my back, as if they were still tied. He was still hunched over and his eyes bore into mine.

“Nice try, asshole. But what did it get you? Now, I’m going to gut you like a mackerel.”

Vole walked toward me deliberately, as if he had all the time in the world. He reached toward the cutting board to get the knife that had freed me. He looked confused when he saw it was not there.

“Looking for this, Lenny?” I said.

I brought the arm that was holding the knife from behind my back and whipped it into his side, hoping the blade was long enough to reach his heart.

It wasn’t. And its thin blade broke off inside him. But it bought me some time. Vole twisted away, screaming in agony. I clubbed him on the side of his head and bolted for the door. I did not like my chances in the confined space of the cabin with an outraged maniac who the SEALS thought was too dangerous. Perhaps I could reach one of the big knives that Vole had planned on using on me.

I didn’t get far. Halfway through the door he tackled me and we both went sprawling across the deck. I kicked him and he clubbed me across the neck. Then he grabbed me by the throat and lifted me to the stern, bending me backward toward the water. The idling propeller roared in my ear.

Vole was beyond reason. I could see the end of the broken knife sticking out from under his armpit. He started to strangle me. I pounded both hands against the side of his head. I reached for his eyes. He ducked his head into his chest to protect them. This was not his first rodeo. He knew what he was doing. I started seeing black spots. I was losing.

My hand hit something. It was the huge metal lure attached to the fishing rod sitting in its holder in the rear chair. I felt for the lure. I pulled it down until it came loose from the guide and then slammed its set of three treble hooks into the side of Vole’s head, where they impaled his right ear and cheek. Then I grabbed the line and pulled. Vole screamed and let go of my throat. I vaulted upright, grabbed the loose line and wrapped it around his throat. Then I reached down and grabbed him by the ankles and pitched him over the stern. I heard the drag on the reel click out as his weight pulled line off the spool. Vole was still too close to the boat to suit me, so I climbed up the ladder to the wheel and pushed the throttle forward. The boat surged ahead. I looked back. Vole was screaming and hydroplaning in our wake 20 yards behind. After five minutes the screaming stopped. I put the throttle in neutral and went down to the stern. The boat slowed, but still moved ahead slowly, drifting with the current.

I expected to find Vole dead. Instead, I watched in disbelief as he headed back to the boat, by alternating a doggy-paddle with pulling himself hand-over-hand on the line, which he had wrapped around his arm. Never underestimate a Navy SEAL, especially a deranged one. He had ripped the lure from his cheek and ear, or rather from where the ear had been. It was now just a bloody gash. The lure was now embedded in his back. He would soon reach the wire leader, which would make it easier for him.

A fin cut the water behind him, maybe 30 yards out. Then another. Vole saw the sharks, too. They were after more than bait fish. They were following his blood trail.

Vole redoubled his efforts. I sat in the chair watching him, thinking about Anna Dickson. The sharks were now perhaps 15 yards behind him. When he got within five feet of the rear platform he was probably sure he was going to make it. I reached for the gaff. His hands grasped the platform. I stuck the business end of the gaff in his chest, just hard enough to get his attention. He realized he couldn’t climb on the platform unless I let him.

The sharks drew closer. His eyes were white with terror. I reached in my pocket for my iPhone. It was undamaged. God bless you, Steve Jobs, wherever you are. I pressed the app for voice recording.

“Why did you kill Ashleigh Harper and Anna Dickson?”

He spit out blood and water. He looked at me, and then twisted his head to see the fins. I prodded him with the gaff.

“She told me to.”

“Who?”

“Sandy.”

“Sandy Nidus?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are the bodies?”

“I dumped them in the ocean.”

“After you cut them up?”

“Yes!”

I shut off the recording. Vole started to ease his way higher on the platform. Despite his wounds, he had a crafty look in his eyes. He knew that the recording would be worthless, even if it survived. As long as he was around to recant it. Or if I, and it, were at the bottom of the Atlantic.

“Thanks,” I said, and pulled the gaff back.

The relief on Vole’s face was palpable. He started clambering up onto the platform. He probably figured he’d have another go around with me. A vision of Anna Dickson swam into my consciousness. I tried to remember what she looked like before Vole strangled her and cut her up. I pushed the gaff back into Vole’s shoulder and shoved. He screamed and slid back off the platform.

“Dinnertime,” I said, as I reached over and eased the drag on the big fishing reel, just as Vole had taught me.

“No!” he screamed even louder as the line clicked out and he drifted back toward the sharks.

I could see the black tips on their dorsal fins. They were the same kind of sharks that Vole said he hated, just like the one he brutally bludgeoned in front of me. I suppose it was a kind of poetic justice.

The sharks each hit a leg almost simultaneously with sickening grunting sounds. I resisted the impulse to sing “Let It Go” from Frozen as Vole was being gobbled. It didn’t go well with his screams, and I wasn’t sure of the words anyway.

Vole went under but soon surfaced. I could see one shark twisting and rolling behind him. The other had disappeared, probably with a mouthful. Another unearthly scream and the remaining shark also disappeared. What was left of Vole bobbed in the boats wake. He was a lot lighter now and no longer took any line out.

I knew the sharks would soon be back for more of Vole, so I started to reel in what was left of him. It may have been the strangest thing I’d ever done. I thought of Quint in Jaws. As he got closer to the boat, I could see he was now very dead. More fins broke water. I had seen enough. I used the gaff to get him onto the platform, and then into the boat over the gunwale. Legless from the hips, he wasn’t that heavy.

The sharks came right up to the boat and bumped it hard. One came half out of the water onto the platform, which was smeared with blood. I whacked it with the gaff and drew more blood. The shark rolled off the platform and disappeared, a red streak streaming from the gaff wound. The other sharks followed it under, smelling its blood. They would surely tear it apart in a feeding frenzy in which Vole had been the appetizer. There is no honor among sharks.

I looked at the top half of Vole. His dead eyes stared at me. I didn’t feel sorry for him, but I still threw up over the side for a full 15 minutes.

CHAPTER 24 - LAW AND ORDER

It was not my first time on that kind of boat and I soon figured out the controls. I turned it around and gunned the engine. I could vaguely make out Bald Head Island in the distance. As I got closer, I headed toward the brightest set of lights, hoping it was the marina. I recalled what Vole said about the tide and did not want to chance running aground off Harper’s house.

Bismarck once said that Providence watched over “fools, drunks and the United States of America”. To that I might add beat-up amateur private-eye sailors, because I found the marina!

Of course, it was pretty dark and I did not know exactly where the late Lenny Vole berthed his boat. So I headed along the piers near Mojo’s Restaurant until I found an open space and then docked. Or at least I tried to dock. I was not feeling too chipper at that point and my reflexes were a bit slow. My arrival, bow first, was more of a crash, and I took out a good chunk of the dock, as well as two previously nice-looking mini-yachts. The collision, which put Vole’s boat part way up on the dock, where it stuck, knocked me flat, and put some bruises on top of my bruises.

The noise was incredible and when I finally regained my feet I could see lights coming on all over the marina area and some people coming out of Mojo’s. The area would soon be swarming with people, including cops. I did not feel up to explaining what happened, especially with Vole now sitting legless in a fishing chair dripping gore all over the deck. So, I hopped onto the dock and ran past some of the people standing wide-eyed in front of Mojo’s to a line of golf carts. All the carts had keys in them. It was nice to be in a community where everyone trusted each other, although after this night that might change.

I jumped in a cart that had a mahogany dashboard with a bobble-head Jesus. I took that as a good sign. I needed all the help I could get. I heard angry shouts. I floored the cart, in a manner of speaking, racing away at an undignified 12 miles an hour. If I managed not to fall out again, I probably could get to Ashleigh Harper’s house before anyone could catch me.

***

The house was dark, and there was no one on the first floor. With Vole dead, I was not too worried, but I still wished I had my gun, which had been taken when I was unconscious. A light came on in one of the rooms when I reached the second floor.

“Leonard, is that you?”

It was Sandy Nidus, sounding sultry. I grunted an acknowledgment and walked toward the room.

“Have you cleaned yourself up?”

Another grunt. I was getting good at nonverbal communication.

“Then come to bed. You can take care of Bessie later. I’m horny.”

Apparently the thought of killing me got her all worked up. I took it as a compliment.

She was lying in bed, naked. Her eyes were closed and she was stroking herself.

“Lenny couldn’t make it,” I said, in an almost normal voice. “But don’t stop on my account.”

Her eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright.

“You!”

“The one and only.”

She didn’t ask where Vole was. She could tell from my battered condition that he and I probably didn’t leave on the best of terms.

“You killed him.”

It was a statement of fact.

“Well, I had some help, but yes, I did. I’m beginning to feel bad about it, considering what poor Lenny is missing.”

Sandy Nidus stood up and started walking toward me. Even in my debilitated condition, she was something to see. I tried to maintain eye contact, but my gaze drifted from her large, white breasts to her lush pubic thatch.

She came up to me and ground her breasts and groin into me. I could smell her musk, or whatever a woman in heat exudes. She had really been priming her pump for Vole. But that did not prevent her from now throwing him over the side. For Vole, it was the second time in a couple of hours, although this time it was figurative. He had a bad day in anyone’s book.

“There is no reason any of this has to go further than this bedroom,” Sandy purred, and increased her grinding. It was all I could do not to fall over. “I want you. Fuck me, now. Hard. I’ll show you things you’ve never imagined.”

“I have an excellent imagination,” I said. “But what about Lenny?”

My voice was a little hoarse. Maybe after all that time on the water I was catching a cold.

“I’m sure you can take care of that. It’s a big ocean.” Her hand slithered down toward my belt. “I’ve been waiting for someone like you, Alton. Someone who could free me from him.” Her hand began moving in circles. “It’s obvious that Leonard Vole is not half the man you are.”

“Hell, Sandy,” I said, thinking of what was left of Vole on the boat, “he’s not half the man he used to be.”

I put my hands on her shoulders. She smiled at me and parted her lips. I eased her back toward the bed.

“I like it doggie style,” she said.

“I like to do it with humans,” I replied. “And you don’t make the cut.”

I pushed her hard and she sprawled across the bed. I turned to leave. Bessie Magruder was obviously still alive. The sooner I got her to the cops, the better. Without her, I’d have a hard time explaining the bloody scene down at the docks by Mojo’s, even with my iPhone recording.

“You rotten son of a bitch,” Nidus screamed.

I heard a drawer open. When I turned, she was frantically rummaging through the drawer.

“Is this what you are looking for, dearie?”

We both looked toward the door. Bessie Magruder was standing there, holding my gun.

“Shoot him,” Nidus screamed. “He will expose us.”

Bessie walked over to me.

“You’ll put a good word in for me, won’t you?”

“You bet.”

“What are you doing, you crazy old bitch! We could still get away with it.”

Bessie handed me the gun.

“I figure they were gonna use it on me and then blame you. It was their only way out, what with everything going into the crapper.”

“Smart thinking,” I said, in wonderment.

“Hey. I was on Law and Order. I picked up some things.”

We heard the front door open, and then someone running up the stairs. Bentley, the Police Chief, burst into the room.

“Hi, Fred,” I said. “How’s your golf game? Make any putts lately?”

He gaped at us. The scene was surreal. A bedraggled man holding a gun on a naked woman, with what he would have assumed was one of the world’s most-famous authors standing next to him.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Sandy and Vole murdered the real Ashleigh Harper and a college girl named Anna Dickson.”

“He’s lying, Fred,” Nidus said. “You know me. This maniac killed Vole and was going to kill me. Thank God, you are here.”

It was desperate, but just enough to confuse Bentley for a moment.

“I’m not Ashleigh Harper,” Bessie said, “just so you know.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my iPhone. I hit play and raised the volume. Vole’s confession came through loud and clear.

“Sandy, I’m afraid neither you nor Vole has a leg to stand on,” I said. “Legally, or otherwise.”

Bentley stared back and forth at the three of us. I handed him my gun. He looked at Nidus.

“Sandy, put on some clothes, for Crissakes. We’ll sort this out at the station.” He turned to me. “I knew you were trouble.”

“Just do me a favor chief. When this is all over, tell Charlie and Jim that she is a natural redhead.”

CHAPTER 25 - HOME COOKING

“How did you get out of this one?” Arman Rahm asked me. He looked over at Maks Kalugin, who just shook his head.

A week had passed since I returned from North Carolina. I had just spent the better part of a vodka-lubricated hour regaling them with my experiences on quiet little Bald Head Island. We were in the office at the rear of Deep Gulag, the “gentleman’s club” the Rahm family owned in the South Beach section of Staten Island. The door was closed and we could barely hear the pulsating music coming from the stage-and-pole area where naked young women were slithering before sweaty-browed men. “Dancing” in a Rahm club was a great gig, as that kind of gig went. Arman offered the best wages and tip-sharing in the city, health insurance and, I was stunned to learn, tuition-assistance to those who wanted it. There was a strict “no-touch” rule and patrons who got out of line were quickly squelched by an assortment of beefy bouncers the size of side-by-side refrigerators.

“Well, the whole scene was a bit much for the local cops,” I said.

“You don’t say,” Arman said wryly. “It sounds like Iwo Jima.”

“Yeah, they are more used to the occasional golf cart collision or shark bite. Murders and legless corpses tend to excite them. Not to mention the local Chamber of Commerce. I think those folks wanted to string me up. But the local chief of police knew me and was willing to listen to what I had to say, no matter how unbelievable it sounded. He had to detain me, of course, what with all the damage I had done to the marina and some rich-men’s yachts. Some people were more concerned about that then all the dead bodies. In the end, he called for reinforcements from the mainland. By the next day Bald Head Island was awash with Southport cops and, thank God, North Carolina State Troopers. They were pros, and we soon got things sorted out, especially after I called Mike Sullivan and Cormac. They flew Vocci down to run interference for me.”

“I didn’t think Vocci was your biggest fan,” Arman said.

“We get along better now, even though he commented that a stretch on a North Carolina chain gang might do me a world of good. But he mellowed toward me after we all pulled his boss’s chestnuts out of the fire in the Denton case.”

“Sullivan would still put me away if he could.”

“That’s just professional courtesy, Arman. He’s still the D.A. You’d get a fair shake. Anyway, I told Mike he didn’t owe us anything. That Denton debacle was personal, and you know it.”

“It’s moot. He’ll never get anything on me.

There was a knock on the door, and a beautiful young woman, fully clothed, entered. She was holding a platter of food, which she set on the table between us, along with small plates, forks and napkins.

“Thank you, Galina,” Arman said, and she left.

“Russian appetizers,” he explained. “Every now and then I need some home cooking.”

“You were born here,” I said. “You’re more American than I am.”

“Eat up,” he said, smiling. “It goes well with vodka.”

“Everything goes well with vodka,” Kalugin observed.

The platter was piled with marinated herring and black bread, caviar on toast, fried meats, salami with Russian bread and butter, roasted potatoes and something I could not identify.” I pointed to it. “What is that?”

“Fermented cabbage,” Kalugin said. “A delicacy.”

I’d had enough vodka to try anything, so I filled my plate. Everything was delicious, even the cabbage.

“The Nidus woman’s lawyers will try to paint the old actress as an accomplice, to discredit her testimony,” Arman said.

“Or as a mental defective,” Kalugin said, piling more fermented cabbage on my plate. “Eat up. It is good for the hangover you will have.”

“The prosecution will have the recording I made on the boat,” I said.

“It’s lucky the bastard Vole died,” Kalugin observed. “He surely would have taken back what he said.”

“Maks is right,” Arman said. “After all, the recording was made under duress. Even now, the defense will argue, quite reasonably I might add, that a man will say anything when sharks are about to eat him.”

I took another swig of vodka.

“I knew that. I may have neglected to tell the cops that Vole was about to get chomped when he confessed. They think my hands were free the whole time I was on the boat and I secretly managed to turn on my phone. I told them he was bragging. They think he fell overboard in the struggle and I made a valiant effort to save him.”

“And you didn’t.”

I finished my glass of vodka and poured more shots all around. Then I told them how I loosened the drag on the reel and let Vole float back to his death. I wasn’t worried about the place being bugged. The Rahms had the best anti-surveillance people in the state on their payroll. The room we were in was swept daily.

“How did you finally get him into the boat?” Rahm asked quietly, when I finished.

“I gaffed him. He was pretty light by then.”

Arman shook his head. Even Kalugin looked shocked.

“Mater Bozhya,” he said. “I think you have been hanging around with us too much.” He leaned forward and looked hard at me. “You did not tell Alice this, did you?”

Kalugin always worried about her.

“Of course not. But she is still upset about the whole thing. Anna’s death, of course. She insisted on calling the kid’s brother. I was glad of that. I didn’t really have the heart for it.”

“You don’t deserve her,” Kalugin said.

“Tell me about it. Alice was also disturbed about what happened to the real Ashleigh Harper, who should have been remembered for her great book, and not her brutal murder and this literary scandal. She was a wonderful writer and to sully her reputation by publishing material she didn't want to see the light of day is a tragedy in itself. It is more than fraud. It is a mockery of everything the woman stood for. To Bury a Turtle Dove is part of the national conscience. Young people embraced its environmental message.”

The vodka had loosened my tongue. I was waxing poetic. I waited for one of the others to tease me. Instead, Kalugin started singing, in a deep, sonorous voice:

Ya plachu ne za golubyami,

Yya plachu za nas.

Moi slezy polivat' zemlyu,

Iz kotoroy ikh molodoy nikogda ne letat' besplatno.

Arman and I both stared at him, and he translated the song for my benefit:

I weep not for the doves,

I weep for us.

My tears water the earth,

From which their young will never fly free.

“Those are the most famous lines in To Bury a Turtle Dove,” I marveled. “The one the young girl says when she sees what the developers did to the nesting ground she loved to visit.”

“A good book,” Kalugin said. “It was translated into Russian and was required reading for my Guards division in Afghanistan. We turned those lines into a song. It proved you Americans were raping and polluting the planet.”

“I need more vodka,” I said, trying to picture Maks Kalugin sitting on a tank reading To Bury a Turtle Dove. “I bet it was a best seller in Chernobyl.”

Kalugin grunted in appreciation at my jibe. Arman laughed and poured us all drinks, and we sat there in silence for a while.

“It was the watch,” I finally said. “When those sharks were closing in on Vole all I could think of was that little Disney watch on Anna’s little arm.”

“Rotten bastard,” Kalugin said.

THE END

If you’ve enjoyed this novel, we hope you will drop a review on Amazon. Here is a handy link:

TURTLE DOVE

***

Alton Rhode met Laurene Robillard in the first of this series, CAPRIATI’S BLOOD.  This is an excerpt:

PROLOGUE

“They look smaller than the last bunch.”

“You’ll get more in the box,” the elderly woman working the counter said. “Same price. You can’t beat it.”

“They taste the same?”

“If anything, they are sweeter.” She pointed to a stand a few feet away. “We have some free samples cut up over there. Try them.”

The man looked over at the table and saw that some flies hadn’t needed an invitation.

“I’ll take your word for it.” His mother probably wouldn’t know the difference. At least that was what he’d been told. The information had eased his conscience. Why risk a visit to someone who wouldn’t even recognize her own son? But perhaps the occasional – and anonymous – gifts would soon be unnecessary. But just the thought of what he was going to do sent rivulets of sweat down the man’s sides. “What do I owe you?”

“It comes to $34.95, shipping included east of the Mississippi.”

Prices were going up on everything.

“Where’s it going?”

The customer recited the address. Three times. Like everyone else in the goddamn town, the clerk was a few years past her expiration date. That was one reason he was about to take the biggest risk of his life.

“Want to include a card?”

“No.”

“What’s the return address?”

“If it doesn’t get there,” he said, smiling. “I don’t want them back.”

“I know, but we can apply a refund to your account.”

“I don’t have an account.”

“It would be credited to your card. We take them all. American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Discover. Debit cards, too.”

“I’m paying cash, don’t worry about it.”

“Well, if you give us your address, phone number and email, we can contact you.”

He wanted to throttle the old crone. But long ago, for safety’s sake, the man learned not to make a scene.

“No, thanks.”

“We send out emails about our specials. People love them.”

He took a deep breath and forced another smile. Then he pulled out his wallet and handed the woman $40.

“Just send the box. Keep the change.”

***

It took the man an hour and a half to drive to Fort Lauderdale and settle in at the rundown motel off Dixie Highway straight out of the 1980’s and run by a couple of Russians, which he thought was ironic considering what he was about to do. He registered using one of the many phony I.D.’s he’d collected over the years. They’d wanted a credit card at the desk “for incidentals,” which from the look of the place might include pest control, but the extra hundred bucks he gave them along with the room charge he prepaid shut the Russkies up. They assumed he just wanted to get laid and didn’t want to leave a paper trail. They were half right.

The call he planned to make on the room phone wasn’t going to cost a hundred bucks. It would be short, sweet and to the point. A previous call, made a few days earlier from a similar dump in Sarasota, had insured that the lawyer would be in at 4 P.M. to take his call. The lawyer’s secretary was a dim bulb but the mention that he had important information about the lawyer’s main client finally sealed the deal.

The man looked at his watch. An hour to go. There was a bar across the street from the motel. He walked across and had three stiff bourbons. The last one barely managed to stop the tremor in his hand. One of the rummies sitting on a nearby stool smiled in commiseration. He pegs me as an alky like him, the man thought. He doesn’t know I’m just scared shitless.

***

“It’s that call you’ve been expecting, Mr. Rosenberg.”

Samuel Rosenberg’s secretary stood in the doorway to his office and could have announced the arrival of the Messiah with less fanfare. She was all of 22 and proof to him that the New York City public education system had gone into the toilet. He had tried to get her to use his first name and the phone intercom, with no luck on either.

Rosenberg sighed. She had only recently mastered the basic legal forms he rarely produced. His previous secretary was canned for running her mouth in the wrong places and the lawyer decided that if he had to choose between stupid and indiscreet, stupid was the way to go.

“Thank you, Francine,” he said. “That’s a fetching outfit you are wearing today.”

She smiled and twirled away. Her clothes were still terrible, he knew, but at least they now covered her midriff. That was one battle won.

“This is Samuel Rosenberg,” he said into the phone. He looked at the calendar on his desk for the name. “What can I do for you, er, Mr. Wagner?”He put his feet up on his desk and rocked back in his chair. “You mentioned something about one of my clients. I have many. Can you be more specific.”

“Quit dicking around, counselor. You don’t want me to be specific. We both know who we’re talking about. I want you to be an intermediary between us. I have a proposal, a trade.”

“I’m listening.”

“I know who killed Fred Jarvis.”

Rosenberg’s feet came off the desk as he sat up. Like every attorney on Staten Island, he remembered the unsolved killing. Jarvis was a piece of crap, a crook, but a lawyer nonetheless. If crooked lawyers became targets on Staten Island, who was safe?

“If it wasn’t you,” Rosenberg said coldly, “then I suggest you contact the police. If you need representation, I can suggest someone. What does this have to do with my client?”

“You’re client was with me. He saw everything, too.”

Jesus H. Christ. He reached for a pad and noted the time, just because he felt he had to do something. He looked at the caller I.D. It said “Unknown Number.”

“I thought that might get your attention. I guess he forgot to mention it. We were young, and just along for the ride, so to speak. Even so, we might have been implicated as accessories. Not that we were inclined to say anything back then. We were all just one happy family. But things have changed. I read the papers. He’s got a shitpot of reasons why he’d want the murder solved now, capische? He would probably love to blow the whistle, but can’t, not without corroboration. So, here’s the deal.”

After the man finished speaking, Rosenberg said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“It won’t be easy, pal, there is a slight problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Your client wants to kill me.”

***

A half hour later Rosenberg pulled into the Crooke’s Point Marina in Great Kills Harbor. Not for the first time he reflected that, considering who owned many of the boats docked there, the “e” could have been dropped from the marina’s name.

Nando Carlucci was standing on the bridge of a Grady White whose engine was just then rumbling to life. Rosenberg climbed aboard clumsily. He didn’t like boats, or fishing. But it was hard to bug a boat, especially when his client belonged to a boat club that allowed him the use of dozens of crafts of varying sizes on short notice. At least the Grady White was big enough to have an interior cabin. It really was cold. Ten minutes later he and Carlucci, the grossly overweight head of Staten Island’s last remaining Italian crime family, were cruising a half mile offshore, far from any possible listening devices aimed their way. Yes, thank God for the Grady, Rosenbrg thought. Nando in anything smaller was an invitation to capsize.

“So, what the fuck is so urgent?”

The lawyer told him. Carlucci stared at him for a full minute.

“I can’t believe the balls on the guy. After what he did to me. He’s right, I’ll kill him. What did he call himself?”

“Said his name was Wagner.”

“Son of a bitch.”

When Carlucci calmed down, he said, “What does he want?”

Rosenberg braced himself for another tirade.

“One million dollars and a head start after the trial.”

Carlucci erupted again, flinging charts and ashtrays around the cabin. When he stopped, he said, “What do you think? Can you swing the deal?”

“I think so. It would be a feather in the D.A.’s cap. Can you swing the million?”

“Yeah, but tell him some of it has to be in jewelry, mostly diamonds.”

Rosenberg didn’t want to know where the jewelry was coming from. There had been a rash of burglaries in some of the borough’s most upscale neighborhoods over the past few months. The cops were stumped, since some of the homes had state-of-the-art alarm systems. But the burglars vanished before the response cars arrived on the scene.

***

Wary at first, the D.A. and his assistants had grown more interested and animated as Carlucci and his lawyer outlined his plan in more detail during several secret meetings.

“We insist on full immunity for Mr. Carlucci,” Rosenberg said, “as well as for the corroborating witness.”

That had been the sticking point during the weeks of negotiations. The D.A. and his subordinates loathed Nando Carlucci. The idea of letting the fat mobster off the hook for a murder was repugnant to them.

“But you still won’t tell us who this alleged witness is,” one of the A.D.A’s said.

“You don’t have to know that now,” Rosenberg said. “You have nothing to lose. We’re the ones who have to produce. Mr. Carlucci wants to do his civic duty and clear his conscience, even though he was but an innocent bystander in the lamentable affair.”

In the end, the D.A. went along with it.

“We’ll get Carlucci eventually,” he said after the meeting. “One big fish at a time.”

As they drove away from the D.A.’s office, Rosenberg said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Nando. This is a big risk. Opens up a can of worms. He’d better produce.”

“Don’t you worry, counselor. He’ll produce. He wants it bad.”

“It’s not just you, Nando. I’ve got my reputation to think of. My name will be anathema with the D.A. if we stiff him on this.”

Carlucci looked at his lawyer with ill-concealed contempt.

“Your fuckin’ name is an enema. You got no reputation to protect. Just do your job and wrap up the immunity thing tighter than a virgin’s pussy. I don’t have to remind you what happened to the last lawyer that fucked with my family, do I? That’s how we got here, ain’t it?”

CHAPTER 1 – THE RED LANTERN

Two Months Later

The workmen wheeled the last of the potted plant life into my office on hand dollies.

“You sure you don’t want us to put some out in the reception area, Mr. Rhode?”

“I haven’t finished painting it and the carpet is coming next week,” I said. “I’d only have to move them all.”

He shrugged and handed me an envelope.

“Miss Robart wrote down some instructions on how to care for them. She said if you have any questions, just call.”

I’m not a plant guy. I’d keep the hardiest. The best shot at survival for the rest was my plan to donate them to other offices in the building. I called Nancy Robart at the Staten Island Botanical Garden to thank her for the foliage. She was the Executive Director and had donated the plants to give my new digs “some much needed class.” She was at a luncheon, so I left the thank you on her voice mail.

Lunch sounded good to me. I opened a drawer in my desk, dropped Nancy’s instructions in it and pulled out the holster containing my .38 Taurus Special. A lot of people in my line of work don’t carry guns. Most of them have never been shot at, in war or peace. I have, in both, and like the comforting feel of iron on my hip. Besides, with all the hoops you have to jump through to get a permit in New York City (if you fill out the paperwork wrong they send you to Guantanamo), it seems silly not to carry. The Taurus revolver has only five chambers in its cylinder, to keep the weight down. But the bullets are big. The gun is meant for close-in work. Presumably if you need more than five shots a sixth won’t matter.

I clipped the holster on my belt and shrugged into the brown corduroy jacket that was draped on the back of my chair. The jacket felt a little tight around the shoulders. I wasn’t back to my old weight but my rehab, which included lifting iron, was redistributing muscle. I’d have to get my clothes altered soon. Or, assuming I got some clients, buy some new threads. But the jacket still fell nicely, even if it didn’t quite cover the paint smudges on my jeans, and there was no gun bulge.

I walked down the stairs to the building lobby. The docs at the V.A. hospital said it would help strengthen my leg and it seemed to be working. The limp was barely noticeable. I stopped at the security station by the elevators and told the guard that I’d left my office unlocked because the cable company was scheduled to install my high-speed Internet and phone system sometime in the afternoon.

“You’re the private eye on eight,” she said. “Rhode.” Her name tag said “H. Jones” and she was sturdily stout without being fat. Her skin color was only slightly darker than her tan uniform. “What time they give you?”

“Sometime between 1 PM and the next ice age,” I said.

“I hear you.” She wrote something in a large cloth-bound ledger, the kind that used to sit on hotel check-in counters and private eyes were able to read upside down in noir movies. I never could read upside down, so the move to hotel computers made no difference to me. “You coming back?”

“Yeah. Just running out to pick up some lunch.”

“Where you headed?”

“Red Lantern, in Rosebank. You know it?”

“Oh, man. Best eggplant hero in the borough.”

“Can I bring one back for you?”

“Sure.”

She bent to get her purse.

“Forget it. My treat. What’s the ‘H’ stand for?”

“Habika. It means ‘sweetheart,’ in some African language I have no clue about. My folks had just seen Roots when I was born. Coulda been worse, I guess.”

“Alton,” I said, extending my hand.

“Like I said, it coulda been worse,” she said. “You can call me ‘Abby’. Everyone else does. Abby Jones.”

“Why not sweetheart, or sweetie?”

“Cause then I hit you upside your head. Listen, my brother works at the cable company. I’ll give him a call to make sure they don’t forget about you.”

A Rhode rule: It never hurts to buy an eggplant hero for a security guard.

There was a bank branch in the lobby. It had an ATM but the daily limit was $400 and I had a bar tab to square. I was working off the cash from a dwindling home equity line of credit inexplicably approved by the same bank. I wondered if I could be nailed for trading on inside information if I shorted its stock because it lent me the money.

The branch manager came out of his cubbyhole to shake my hand, smiling effusively. He led me over to a cute little redhead teller who thanked me before, during and after the transaction. If I’d wanted a toaster, she would have gone home and taken one from her own kitchen. The banks had a lot of PR ground to make up.

I now had a grand in my pocket. Flush and hungry; a combination that always works for me. I planned to walk the mile or so along Bay Street to the Red Lantern. But it was drizzling, with the imminent promise of something heavier. With a corduroy jacket I’d weigh as much as Donald Trump’s hairdo by the time I arrived. I don’t use an umbrella unless animals are lining up two-by-two on the ark ramp.

My three-year old light blue Chevy Malibu is distinguished only by several round indentations on its trunk and rear panels. I’d bought it at Honest Al Lambert’s Used Car Lot in Tottenville. Al had acquired six almost-pristine Malibus at auction from a rental fleet, but hadn’t counted on the car carrier transporting them from Denver running into a vicious hail storm in Indiana. The vehicles on top had their windshields smashed and their bodywork turned into the far side of the moon. Undaunted, Al tried to sell me one of those. But even the dimmest suspect might notice being followed by a car with more dimples than a golf ball. So I opted for one of the Malibus on the carrier’s first level, which sustained little damage but were still heavily discounted. It looked like every third car on the road. Still, I made a few modifications, including a passenger-side ejector seat activated by a red button hidden in the gear shift. I didn’t actually do that.

At the Red Lantern all the parking spots, including those next to fire hydrants, bus stops and “No Parking” signs, were filled with cars that had official stickers or emblems: police, fire, sanitation, court officers, judges, Borough Hall, Coast Guard. Coast Guard? The NFL season was in full swing. It was Friday and the regular lunchtime crowd was inflated by dozens of people dropping off betting slips for Sunday’s games in the bar’s huge football pool. My glove compartment was full of phony decals and emblems that I would have used in an illegal spot if one was available, but I couldn’t chance double parking and blocking in some Supreme Court judge. I settled for a spot two blocks away.

This section of Rosebank, once almost exclusively Italian, with a sprinkling of Jewish delis and bakeries, now had businesses run by more recent immigrants. I passed a Korean nail salon flanked by an Indian restaurant and a Pakistani convenience store. Across the street was something called the Somali-American Social Club, where a tall man in a white dashiki stood outside smoking. Probably didn’t want to light up inside near the explosives. Two doors down, Gottleib’s Bakery, a local institution for 80 years, still held the fort. If World War III broke out, I was pretty certain it would start here.

Inside the Red, patrons were two-deep at the rail keeping three bartenders hopping. All the tables in the front and back rooms were occupied and I pushed my way to the bar. The front room had dimpled tin ceilings that tended to amplify and redirect noise. In fact, because of an acoustic anomaly, something said at one end of the bar might be heard clearly at the other end. Of course, most conversations were lost in the mix of babble, but people still tended to be discreet. If you wanted to ask for a quick blow job in the car, or you were a city councilman asking five large in cash from a contractor who needed a zoning variance, you might as well put it on cable. The half-oval bar ran the length of the front room and had a dark green leather border matched by the upholstery of high-back swivel stools. A large silver trophy depicting a crouching man with his hand swept back occupied a place of honor next to the register. Its nameplate read “R. Kane.” Underneath that, “1973 Tri-State Handball Championships.” A third line said “Second Place.”

Roscoe Kane, 60 pounds past his handball prime, lumbered over. I reached in my pocket, counted off $500 and put it on the bar.

“Take me off the books.”

“Business picking up?”

“I’m being optimistic.”

Reaching behind the register, Roscoe pulled out a beat-up marble notebook of the type your mother bought for your first day of school. He laid it on the bar, flipped some pages, picked up a pencil and crossed something out. He took $420 from the pile and put it in the cash drawer. At the same time he reached down into a cooler, lifted out a bottle of Sam Adams Light, twisted off the cap with one hand and slid it down to me. Ex-handball champs don’t lack for manual dexterity. He put the notebook away. I knew that dozens, maybe hundreds, of similar notebooks had served the same purpose since the Red Lantern, one of the oldest taverns in the city, opened its doors back when the Kings Rifles garrisoned Staten Island.

Roscoe put some bar nuts in front of me and said, “Glass? Lunch?”

“No, and yes,” I said through a mouthful of nuts. “Two eggplant heroes to go.”

I took a long draw on my beer. It was ice cold. Not too many people drank Sam Adams in the Red, let alone Sam Adams Light, but Roscoe kept in a stash for me. It was the only light beer I’d ever had that didn’t taste light.

I said, “Is it true that the Algonquins ran a tab in here?”

“Never. Bastards stiffed us.”

“Yeah,” one of the regulars at the bar snorted, “and this place hasn’t bought back a drink since.”

As I sipped my beer, I turned to scan the opposite wall, which was covered floor to ceiling with tally sheets for the 1,400 people in the football pool. The alphabetically-listed entrants were a democratic cross section of the populace, including just about every elected and appointed official, several judges, a smattering of assistant district attorneys, college professors, scores of cops and half the hoods in the borough. The sheets were taken down after the Monday night games and updated by the three elderly Italian ladies who also ran the kitchen. No one questioned their cooking or their accuracy.

I felt a blast of chilly air. The bar’s cheerful hubbub eased a bit and one of the other bartenders said “shit” under his breath. I turned as Arman Rahm and a fire hydrant entered the bar. The fire hydrant’s name was Maks Kalugin and had more bullet holes in him than Emperor Maximilian.

If you would like to read all of CAPRIATI’S BLOOD, you can use this link:

CAPRIATI’S BLOOD

Again, we hope you will try all the author’s books available on Amazon. He can be contacted at ljdemaria@aol.com and welcomes your comments.

ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES

JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS

COLE SUDDEN CIA THRILLERS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence De Maria began his career as a general interest reporter (winning an Associated Press award for his crime reporting) and eventually became a Pulitzer-nominated senior editor and financial writer The New York Times, where he wrote hundreds of stories and features, often on Page 1. After he left the Times, De Maria became an Executive Director at Forbes. Following a stint in corporate America – during which he helped uncover the $7 billion Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme and was widely quoted in the national media – he returned to journalism as Managing Editor of the Naples Sun Times, a Florida weekly, until its sale to the Scripps chain in 2007. Since then, he has been a full-time fiction writer. De Maria is on the board of directors of the Washington Independent Review of Books, where, when he’s not killing people in his novels, he writes features, reviews and a column:

THE WRITE STUFF (MY BLOG)

***

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Table of Contents

TURTLE DOVE

CHAPTER 1 - DESTINATION WEDDINGFive Months LaterSomewhere In North Carolina

CHAPTER 2 - MOJO’S

CHAPTER 3 - BRIDE AND GROOM

CHAPTER 4 - HOOKER BRIDESMAIDS

CHAPTER 5 - UNCLE ALTON

CHAPTER 6 - ANNA

CHAPTER 7 - CAPTAIN VOLE

CHAPTER 8 - TEN-POUND HEADSThe

CHAPTER 9 - GOLF AND GOSSIP

CHAPTER 10 - THE BROTHERSix Weeks Later

CHAPTER 11 - THE LETTER

CHAPTER 12 - FINGERPRINTS

CHAPTER 13 - BAGELS

CHAPTER 14 - LEON

CHAPTER 15 - STRONTIUM 90

CHAPTER 16 - PESTO

CHAPTER 17 - TALENT

CHAPTER 18 - UNEXPECTED PAYDAY

CHAPTER 19– A BRIDGE TOO FAR

CHAPTER 20 - DINNER INVITATION

CHAPTER 21 - LIGHTS OUT

CHAPTER 22– ANOTHER BOAT RIDE

CHAPTER 23 - CHUM

CHAPTER 24 - LAW AND ORDER

CHAPTER 25 - HOME COOKING