A Quarter for a Kiss (22 page)

“Jodi,” I said, “can you help me with something in the back?”

“Sure,” she said. “Be right back, guys. Make yourselves at home.”

She followed me into the bedroom and I shut the door behind her.

“Was it necessary to tell them that?” I whispered sternly. “‘My stepfather’s a PI’?”

“I was just making conversation.”

“Well, I’d like to remind you that what we’re doing here is absolutely no one’s business. Do not share with them my occupation. Do not tell them we are here on an investigation. In fact, don’t even tell them what happened to Eli. Don’t trust
anybody
. Understand?”

“Of course.”

“Fine,” I said. She looked so remorseful I felt bad for having come on so strong. “I just don’t want to see you spilling our business to the first cute guy who looks your way.”

Her face broke into a big smile.

“He
is
cute, isn’t he?

I rolled my eyes.

“I thought you were still brokenhearted over Franco.”

“Franco schmanko,” she said. “You only live once.”

Blithely, she turned and flounced up the hall. Sometimes, it seemed as though she wasn’t more than twelve years old.

Ignoring the crowd, I retrieved my clothes from the dryer, went back to my room, and neatly folded everything. Once that was finished, I killed time by cleaning out my purse and then my briefcase, nearly filling the tiny bathroom trash can with the brochures and unneeded receipts that I had accumulated over the last few days. Finally, when I had done everything I could think of to do, I got out my cell phone to call Tom and see what the status was with him.

Before I could get through to him, I heard his voice out in the living room. After a moment he found me in my room and shut the door behind him.

“Just what we needed,” he said. “A party.”

“Tell me about it. How’d you make out?”

“Boat reserved and waiting at the dock,” he said softly, brushing his lips against my cheek. “And here’s our copy of the surveillance warrant from Sergeant Ruhl. How’d the dog bone work?”

“All the way to one point four miles,” I replied, scanning the document he had handed me. “Of course, with these winding roads, I’m sure you weren’t that far away as the crow flies.”

“Either way, that’s pretty good.”

I tucked the warrant into the case of the listening station.

“Probably too good,” I said.

“Too good?”

“The transmission is so strong, it’ll probably be detected. We’ll give it a try, but I doubt it’ll last long. I’m sure they sweep for bugs.”

“But if we plant this bug and they detect it, won’t that alert them to our presence?”

“It might,” I replied, “but don’t you think that’s worth the risk? We really need to hear inside that house—and the dog bone is by far the easiest way to try. If they’re that protected, and they find something, they won’t know who’s responsible. They probably half expect it anyway.”

With all of the revelers either on the deck or in front of the television, Tom and I went into the kitchen and put together some food, packing it neatly into a tote bag. Then we changed into bathing suits and boating clothes, and with a quick goodbye to the crowd, we took our things, including the suitcase full of surveillance gear, and drove down to the harbor. I asked Tom to stop at a roadside stand on the way so I could buy a hamburger, though he looked at me as though I were crazy for ordering something from a place called “Dirty Nellie’s.”

The boat was very nice but much bigger—and taller—than I had expected.

“All they had was a twenty-eight-footer,” Tom said, grinning like a teenager. Somehow, I had the feeling he wasn’t all that disappointed. He was so excited, in fact, that I didn’t have the heart to tell him it might be a bit too conspicuous.

Giving it the benefit of the doubt, I stepped on board the shiny white deck, tilting my head back to look up at the area where Tom would actually sit to drive the boat.

“You have to climb up there to drive it?” I asked, pointing toward the aluminum ladder.

“Yeah. That’s called the flybridge.”

The deck we were standing on was about ten feet wide, with two fishing chairs bolted to the back next to the diving platform.

“Come take a look at the stateroom,” Tom said, gesturing toward the door that was under the flybridge.

I took a step down then two more down again, entering a cozy room that held everything we would need in compact size.

“It’s cute,” I said, peeking at the combination kitchen and dining area. There was a small fridge, a two-burner stove, and even a little microwave. “I love the little kitchen.”

“It’s a galley,” Tom corrected. “And don’t say cute.”

I opened a door to find a sink and toilet.

“Tiny bathroom,” I said.

“It’s called a head,” Tom corrected.

Boating people were always so funny about getting the terms right. The dining area held a good-sized table, bolted to the floor, and was surrounded on both sides by well-padded bench seating.

“What’s that called?” I asked, pointing beyond the dinette to what looked like bunk beds up under the hull.

“That’s the forward cabin,” he replied. “Two bunks for sleeping, with storage underneath. There’s also storage under these benches, and that one folds out to make a double bed.”

“Nice. It’s enough to make you want to forget the investigation and just go for a little vacation.”

“Don’t I wish.”

I sat at the table, checking the view from the windows there.

“This will be perfect for our listening station,” I said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

As nice as the boat was, I found myself feeling a bit apprehensive, wishing we could do this by canoe instead. Since Bryan’s death, I hadn’t been very comfortable around power boats.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m a Louisiana boy. Don’t forget, I’ve been driving boats since I was fifteen. We had a camp out on the Tchefuncte River.”

He certainly seemed to get the hang of this craft quickly. The rental company had already given him a basic lesson, and we stuck fairly close to shore while he got a feel for it.

By the time we headed out into open water, I was confident he knew what he was doing, so I tried to let my worries melt away in the warmth of the Caribbean sun. I spent the first part of the trip down in the cabin but finally climbed the ladder to join him up on the flybridge.

“You doing okay?” I asked loudly over the sound of the wind. It whipped at our hair, the scenery surrounding us simply gorgeous.

“Absolutely,” he replied, flashing me a contented smile.

I leaned into him, kissing him on the cheek and then slipping my arms around his waist.

Tom had picked up some nautical charts of the area, and soon he had me acting as navigator, watching the chart for landmarks and then noting them on shore. We passed Trunk Bay, Maho Bay, and Mary Point, rounding the end to ride along the slightly rougher waters of the Northshore. Tom said the boat rental company had warned him about going beyond the East End, where the Caribbean met the Atlantic and we would have to face strong currents, gusty winds, and rough seas. Fortunately, our destination would come up much sooner than that. Dianne’s house was on a small peninsula that jutted out into the calm waters of Turtle Bay.

“I think that’s Leinster Bay,” I said, pointing to a beautiful, shallow cove. “We’re getting close.”

After we passed Brown Bay, Tom slowed the boat, and soon we reached the peninsula that we were looking for, a tiny promontory of land called Turtle Point. Looking up at the tall hill that rose from the water, I thought I could see the coral-colored roof of Dianne’s house peeking from the trees at the very top. I took out the satellite photos from Eli’s file and tried to reconcile the geography we were seeing firsthand with the bird’s-eye view in the photos. I felt certain we had found the correct place.

We eased around the end of the point to find a protected little cove on the other side of Turtle Bay. It looked exactly as I had expected, with a small sandy beach in the curve of the peninsula and a private road that zigzagged up the hill to the compound at the top.

Not wanting to look suspicious, we didn’t slow down once we were there but simply kept going. Once we were out of sight of the cove and the house, Tom turned off the engine and let us drift to a stop. I leaned over the side of the rail, and I could see the sandy bottom, about ten feet down. It had been a long time since I had been in water this clear. When the boat stopped, Tom flicked the switch for the anchor, and we could hear the gears as it rolled into place.

“The timing is good, at least,” I said, checking my watch. “It’ll be dark soon. Then we can make our move.”

“And what is our move, exactly?” he asked.

“First things first,” I said, taking the ladder down to the deck and then stepping into the galley. I found my tote and retrieved the hamburger we had bought on the way.

“We eat?” he asked, following me inside.

“Not exactly.”

I put the burger on the counter and then dug through the suitcase for the dog bone with the bug inside. As Tom watched, I pulled the beef patty from the burger and proceeded to rub it all over the bone.

“You are one smart lady,” he said, shaking his head.

I wondered suddenly if in his line of work he was ever required to do this sort of thing. When I thought of him working for the NSA, I had been picturing him at a computer, slaving over code-breaking programs—but for all I knew, he was some sort of field agent.

Once the bone was covered with the smell of the meat, I set it on the counter and suggested we check the nautical charts to see if there were depth descriptions for Turtle Bay.

“If it’s deep enough there,” I said, “we just wait for dark, sail as close as we can to the beach, and then give the bone a good throw. If it’s too shallow to get the boat close enough, I guess we’ll have to swim in and put it there.”

We pulled out the charts and spread them on the table. All of the depths were marked as approximates, but it looked as though we could get the boat in about ten yards from the beach.

“I think I can do it,” Tom said. “I’m no baseball player, but pitching a dog bone shouldn’t be all that hard.”

“What about boating in the darkness?” I asked. “Is that safe?”

“Not really. But we can if we have to, I guess.”

We had about an hour to kill before it would be dark enough to head back, so I suggested we jump in for a swim. After gazing at the gorgeous water since we got here, there was nothing I felt like doing more.

“Last one in’s a rotten egg!” Tom said, pulling off his T-shirt and diving from the bow. It took me a moment longer to strip down to my suit, but then I jumped in after him, plunging into the crystal clear water.

It was fabulous!

After all of the stress of late, to be able to lie back and simply float among some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world was priceless. Sticking close to the boat, we swam and laughed and talked and floated until the sun had dipped low on the horizon. Reluctantly, we climbed from the water and then sat on the back of the boat for a while side by side as we dripped dry.

“Can I ask you a question?” I ventured, hoping my train of thought wouldn’t spoil the moment.

“Of course.”

“If someone were a cryptologist for the NSA,” I said, “would they go out into the field to plant bugs and collect secret messages and all of that? Would they use weapons and deal with spies and know how to do covert ops?”

Tom chuckled.

“You watch too many movies,” he said.

“Well, would they?”

Tom looked around, seeming to gather his thoughts.

“I would imagine the NSA is more compartmentalized than that. If someone is good at breaking codes, I doubt they would waste their time doing anything
but
that.”

“So someone else probably goes out and does all the physical stuff, and the NSA cryptographers are probably just handed the codes and the programs they need to break?”

“I would imagine it’s exactly like that. Sometimes, they might know more details about the codes they are breaking than others. But either way, code-breaking is a desk job. Nowadays, mostly it’s a computer thing. Though that’s not to say their work can’t have implications that reach far beyond the walls of the office.”

“Oh, I understand that. I just wondered…” I let my voice trail off. “You seem to have some natural talent in this area.”

“In what area?”

“Detecting.”

“From you, Callie, I take that as high praise indeed.”

“I just wondered if you learned any of it on the job, so to speak.”

My statement sat there for a long time, and the longer Tom remained silent, the worse I felt about asking. Why had I ruined such a lovely moment with yet another attempt at probing?

“Cryptographers
are
detectives,” he said finally, “regardless of whom they work for.”

“In what way?”

“The very qualities that make me a good cryptographer are the same qualities that make you a good detective.”

“Like what?”

“Logic. Resourcefulness. Patience. Persistence. For example, you’re not going to let this case go until you know everything about who Nadine is and what she was trying to tell Eli. When I’ve got a tough piece of code to crack, I’m not going to let it go until I have found the cipher that will break it. It’s that simple.”

“Or that complicated.”

He smiled.

“Or that complicated,” he echoed.

He talked a bit about the science of cryptology, but after a while I found myself lost in the details, focusing instead on his deep voice and the enthusiasm he held for his work. It struck me that this was the first time Tom had felt free to share with me the actual mechanics of code breaking, and suddenly I felt very glad I had looked him up online and unearthed this fact about his life. Tom Bennett, Crypto Genius, was indeed an extremely intelligent man. I just wished I could know everything there was to know about his world.

Once the sky was completely black, it was time to move. After a quick debate about who had the better arm for throwing the bone, Tom won because he had been a newspaper delivery boy for a number of years and it sounded as though he would have the best aim. Our goal was to land the bone high up on the beach, out of the reach of the tide, but not so far into the brush that the dogs wouldn’t find it.