“What did Baucus do then?”
“How the hell do I know? I guess he went back home and climbed in bed with that bitchy blonde wife. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I just might do that,” I said.
Bitchy blonde, I noted. Evidently Detrich and Greta were not big buddies.
“I told you yesterday to stay out of my way,” he said. “I meant stay the hell out of my life. I’ve had enough of your damned nosiness. You know what can happen to people who do that?”
I’d about had enough of Claude Detrich. He probably hadn’t killed Tim Gannon, but I was certain his reckless use of substandard materials had killed two people at The Sand Castle. I stared him in the eye, my blood pressure rising.
“I’m well aware of what can happen,” I said. “Do you know a couple of guys from New Orleans, both stocky build, one about my height, bushy black hair, gray-streaked, heavy brows, the other shorter and bald-headed?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about two guys in a rented car from Bayou Rentals, a mob business. They did this to my face Thursday night at
Orange
Beach
. The same two came back here last night and I had to run them off with this.” I opened my jacket a little to reveal the holstered Beretta. Just enough for Detrich alone to see. I don’t care to advertise when I’m carrying a weapon.
Detrich’s eyes widened. “I don’t know nothing about it.”
Without another word, I grasped Jill’s arm and led her toward the stairway. As we walked up, I heard Detrich start his truck and head out of the parking lot, engine roaring like an Indy race car.
“Do you think that was wise?” she asked in a calm voice.
I was beginning to calm down also. “Maybe wise, but not smart.”
“Or smart, not wise, my dear.”
Then I thought of something and stopped her on the stairs. “Wait right here. I think I’ll move my Jeep back to where the camera is aimed.”
———
The clock on the living room wall showed
when we got inside. I had turned it back last night to mark the end of Daylight Savings Time. Dusk would come an hour earlier today. Jill walked out onto the balcony, leaned against the railing and looked down at the beach and the rolling surf. I joined her as the late afternoon sun glistened on the white sand. Aside from a couple strolling in the far distance, we saw only two women in bathing suits sitting in folding beach chairs not far beyond the Gulf Sands fence. Three small youngsters romped around them, alternately chasing gulls and each other.
“Do you realize we haven’t been walking since Tuesday?” Jill asked.
“Really? I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess you’re right.”
“How’s your ailing side? Are you up to a stroll on the beach?”
“Sure,” I said.
Despite the cool breeze, we changed into shorts and slipped on our rubber sandals with Velcro straps, which we preferred to padding through the sand barefoot. When we were ready to head out, Jill saw me eye the Beretta lying on the table.
“Are you taking that to the beach?” she asked.
“We shouldn’t need it out there,” I said. “But who knows what we’ll find when we get back here?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re the detective.”
I smiled and slipped the pistol under my belt in back, covering it with my shirttail. After I had put on my Titans cap, we took the elevator down to the walkway that led through the center of the building. The pool area lay in back, quiet now that the weekend visitors had departed for home. Jill and I strolled down a flight of wooden steps to the broad stretch of beach that covered a good fifty yards from the rear of the condo to the water’s edge. The breeze off the Gulf kicked up a few chill bumps on my arms, but a friendly sun warmed us as we walked along the sloping sand that washed smooth with each roll of the surf.
We had not gone far, me with the bill of my cap pulled low to deflect the dropping sun, when we encountered a white-haired man in shorts and a yellow, slicker-type jacket standing between two fishing poles sunk into the sand. The lines were stretched taut out into the water. A plastic bucket and a small tackle box sat behind him.
“Catching anything?” Jill asked, raising her voice to counter the sound of the wind and the surf.
He grinned. “I’ve seen better days.”
“Can’t ask for much better weather-wise,” I said.
“No argument there.”
As we walked on, detouring around him, I recalled my own brief fling as a fisherman. “Did I ever tell you about going fishing with my dad?” I asked Jill.
She grinned. “I thought the McKenzie men were fighters, not fishers.”
On a trip to
Scotland
some years back, we had visited the Argyll and
Sutherland
Highlanders
Museum
at
Stirling
Castle
, finding my grandfather in photos taken in the trenches in
Europe
. I had told her that was a typical McKenzie scene.
I shrugged. “Fighters sometimes need a change of pace.”
“Well, that’s one of your exploits we’ve never discussed. I wasn’t even aware you’d done anything around water but drink it.”
“Come on, Jill. We’ve been out on boats.”
“True. But I’ve never seen you dip anything into the water more than a toe or so.”
She was right. Splashing around in a pool loaded with chlorine was a real turn-off as far as I was concerned. And I didn’t find paddling about in fresh water or salt water any more appealing. I knew how, but swimming was just one of many leisure activities I had managed to forego.
“It was back when I was just a little character,” I said. “Not yet ten. We lived in the city, you know, but I had a buddy whose grandfather had a farm on the
Missouri River
west of
St. Louis
. He would come home after weekends at his grandpa’s telling all these tales about catching fish. I realized later it was like most fishing tales—more tale than fish—but at the time I was impressed.”
“So you had to go, too,” Jill said, stooping to pick up a small sand dollar.
“Right. I begged my dad to take me. I can be pretty persistent at times.”
“Amen to that.”
“But he was no outdoorsman. His idea of outdoor sports was watching the Cards play baseball.”
I did a casual turn, a full circle, looking behind us.
“You told me about going to the ball park.”
“Right. Needless to say, he finally got tired of my harassment. One Friday he came home from work with a couple of poles and reels. The next morning we dug in the yard for worms, nearly filling a soup can with the slimy critters. Dad tied the poles on the car and we headed out into the country, two impersonators trying to act like real fishermen.”
“Was this after the war?”
“Shortly afterward. But he still drove a battered old pre-war Chevy. I wasn’t sure the thing would get us to the river and back. Anyway, a friend at work had told him about a fishing spot just off the road. We pulled up under some tall trees and carried our gear down to the riverbank.”
“Was it summertime?”
“End of summer. September. We sat on a rock ledge not far above the water. Dad put a worm on my hook and I dropped it in. After a few minutes, the line began to jiggle. I knew what that meant. It got me so excited I jumped up and my foot slipped. When I started to topple forward, Dad grabbed for me. He lost his balance, too, and we both fell headlong into the river. With his size, it made quite a splash.”
Jill began to snicker. “Is that why you don’t care for swimming?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it, but you may be right. For sure I wasn’t much of a swimmer back then. He wasn’t either. But somehow we both managed to make it to the riverbank. We were still soaked when we got home and mom nearly went into cardiac arrest from laughing.”
“Can’t blame her. And that ended your career as an angler?”
“It did indeed.” I looked at a woman just down the beach reeling in a line that appeared to have hooked something like a water-logged old hat. I shook my head. “That was my first and last fishing trip.”
I glanced at my watch and then at the sun, now appearing to rest almost flush with the horizon. “We’d better be getting back. It’ll be dark soon.”
I had been doing more talking than watching and we had gone farther than I realized. By the time we reached the stairs to the ramp off the walkway, the swimming pool lights had come on, as well as lights on each floor along the end of the building. Darkness had arrived in a rush, accompanied by a definite chill in the air.
We took the elevator to the second floor and walked quickly to our unit. Inside, I switched on the lights and closed the beachside window that was letting in an icy stream of air. Jill went into the kitchen to heat vegetable soup for supper and I sat down in front of the TV. I was about to turn on what was left of the news when I had an odd feeling that I should check my surveillance tape. Call it one of those hunches that sometimes cropped up for unexplained reasons.
When I played the tape, I found myself staring at the picture spellbound. Even if the camera had not been designed for low light use, the building lights likely would have provided sufficient illumination. The eerily bright picture showed a tall, darkly dressed man, clearly the one from the black Cadillac, moving in behind my Jeep. He disappeared for about a minute, then straightened up and hurried off.
47
Jill stood wide-eyed and watched as I replayed the tape...twice.
“That’s definitely him,” she said, fear in her voice. “Was he planting a bomb?”
“I don’t think so. He had nothing in his hand large enough to be a bomb. Let me go check it out.”
“Don’t go out there, Greg.” She reached out to grab my arm. “They could still be around.”
“I’ll look out first. See if I can spot their car.”
“But they may be driving something different.”
She had a point. They knew I had given the Cadillac’s license number to the cops. I reached for the phone and called the sheriff’s dispatcher. Learning that Sergeant Payne was on duty, I asked for him to call me.
The phone rang a few minutes later.
“What is it, Mr. McKenzie?” the deputy asked.
“My surveillance camera out front picked up one of the men who assaulted me. He was messing around the back of my Jeep.”
“When?”
“Within the last thirty minutes. We had gone walking on the beach. I had the camera targeted on the Jeep, so I caught him on foot. I don’t know what kind of vehicle he was in.”
“Could you see what he was doing?”
“No,” I said. “And I haven’t been out to check the Jeep. I thought I’d wait until your people came.”